Mozilla’s New Version of Firefox for iOS

Mozilla is finally launching a version of Firefox and is trying browser foothold on iOS which is the operating system that powers Apple’s iPhones and iPads. According to Twitter accounts from many at the meeting, Vice President, Johnathan Nightingale of Firefox at Mozilla informed the Mozilla community members at the non-profit organizations’ Mozlandia event in Portland, about the idea.

 Lukas Blakk, Mozilla Release Manager stated that they need to be where their users were and hence they are going to get Firefox on iOS, probably relating an account of Nightingale’s speech in a tweet that TechCrunch spotted. Mozilla’s Manager of data science, Matthew Ruttley had added his comments in his tweet stating that `Firefox for iOS! Let’s do it’, while other community members of Mozilla chimed in with their accounts with regards to the news at the event quoting Nightingale as well as Mozilla President Li Gong.

This could be a move in changing the strategic direction for Mozilla one among many as the non-profit organization attempts of new system to retain its influence in the face of challenges comprising of the mounting popularity of Google’s Chrome browser with Firefox’s light presence in the smartphone as well as tablet market wherein users tend to spend more and more of their computing activities.

Mozilla’s Mission

Mozilla’s mission, a decade ago was to overtake the dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the top priority now is to bring an openness to the present to what the organisation envisages as the `jails’ of iOS and Android. Junior, a browser for iOS was showed by Mozilla in 2012 but the outcome of it did not bear much result and then in 2013, Mozilla decided that it would not build Firefox for iOS due to objections to the limits that Apple had placed on third party browsers.

The presence on smartphones as well as tablets is vital for Mozilla’s effort in remaining relevant in the present computing world and Firefox seems to be a significant presence on the Web and in charting standards which make the Web a viable competitor to Android, iOS, Windows and OS X though its share is dropping. As per figures from analytics firm StatCounter, Firefox has dropped to 11.6 percent of usage as a share of desktop and mobile browsing while on tablets and smartphones, its share of usage in November was around 0.5 percent.

Improvement for Third Party Browser Developers

Mozilla has diversified out to mobile with versions of Firefox for Google’s Android OS together with its own Firefox OS for lower end smartphones though Firefox for iOS is different which is due to the fact that Apple does not allow other browser engine on its mobile OS on the contrary third party browsers like Google’s Chrome together with Opera’s Coast, utilise Apple supplied engine.

As for Mozilla it is important since it undercuts the organization’s mission to use Firefox to encourage the use of open Web technologies rather than technologies locked to a single company’s computing platform. However, Apple has made improvement in conditions for third party browser developers wherein the browser engine supplies faster running of Web based JavaScript programs which mean that the third party browsers can be a better match to Safari’s own performance on iOS.