Mozilla Release its Long Awaited Firefox for iOS

After two years of refusing to release Firefox for iOS, last Thursday Firefox announced its release of Firefox for iOS. iPhone and iPad users can download the apps from iTunes App Store.

Mozilla has been rejecting to release Firefox for iOS since 2013 because of Apple's technology preferences. Mozilla finally changed its stance, and last September Mozilla released its preview version for iOS in New Zealand. This Thursday Firefox 1.1 for iOS is available to download in iTunes App Store. Apple users who have enjoyed Firefox in their MacBook, now can also synchronize their browsing history, open tab, password and bookmarks in iPhone and iPad.

According to PC Magazine, Firefox Vice President of Product Nick Nguyen quoted in a blog that, "Firefox for iOS lets you take your favorite browser with you wherever you go with the Firefox features you already love." With this version, any iPhone and iPad running iOS 8.2 or later version will be able to enjoy feature rich Firefox, like its synchronization and add the app in their homescreen. "This is only the beginning and I'm proud of the team that has worked so hard to make this happen," Nguyen said an hoping tha users will enjoy its first release for iOS.

Firefox browser is developed as an open source browser developed by Mozilla Foundation founded in 1998. It develops its own web browser engine called Gecko and considered as one of the best web browser engine along with WebKit used in Opera and Safari. Google Chrome's engine Blink, was developed as a fork from Gecko engine. Firefox's two years refusal to release  Firefox for iOS is due to Apple's restriction to allow only the usage of WebKit engine for iOS browsers. This gives disadvantage for other browser than Safari, Apple's native browser to provide the best performance.

Eventually, as CNET reported, just as Google has done with Chrome on iOS, Mozilla has put a Firefox wrapper around Apple's browsing technology. Firefox is a rich features browser that can keeps track of all open pages using visual thumbnails, enabling users to see and go to any recent page. Firefox also provides several default search providers, including top three Google, Yahoo and Bing.  User can also search using Amazon, Twitter, Wikipedia and DuckDuckGo directly from the browser.

Nevertheless, Firefox experienced a drop in the number of users. With the growing mobile browsing usage, Firefox has not been able to enter the market. Computer World reported since Firefox for Andoid is released in 2011, it failed to gain meaningful traction and only achieved less than 1% market share. Safari made 41% and Chrome 37% in mobile browser market. It is ironic for browser who once conquered the desktop market is having a difficult time in the mobile.

Now, with the first version of Firefox for iOS is released, Mozilla expects to increase their market share in mobile browsing. The browser is available for iPhone, iPad and iPad touch for free.