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Apple is finally allowing Firefox to use its own engine on the iPhone (but only in the EU)
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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It's a lot of work and a relatively small market, in addition to have to ship it as a separate version that's different from the version in the rest of the world, and subject to Apple's onerous restrictions and review policy, and it's clear that Apple is not looking to make this as frictionless as possible.
Android Firefox Mobile already has Support for uBlock, Sponsorblock etc...
Oh sorry, I was referring specifically to porting Gecko to iOS, not to the part where it would support uBO.
I read somewhere that they had a github preparing ios for a geko version of Firefox. Seems like theyve been anticipating this.
I think so, yes, but there's still a big stretch going from "prototyping in case they open it up" to "being a full-fledged stable product that works well for everyone". But fingers crossed that it'll work out!
And will the Android version run on iOS?
I guess yeah. That makes sense. I was thinking abandoning the WebKit version would give them one fewer, but of course they can't do that since the rest of the market needs it.
I still believe they'd do it, though. The EU market isn't as small as it's made out to be, and maybe they could win some marketshare just by doing it. Even if it's not that big.
Itβs also possible other markets would follow, like India, China, Australia, phillipines, Indonesia etc. That is a big potential userbase.
Yes. I'm assuming we're talking short term.
Well that's just Firefox since ever
Painful but true.
There was like a 10 year period where Firefox had a pretty large market share, and they still have a respectable one despite being in a competition with GOOGLE. I don't agree that Firefox as a whole is just a tiny niche considering it's still used by nearly a couple hundred million people. That's bigger than the population of most of the world's countries.
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
It's also worth noting that, by the nature of the demographic Firefox appeals to, Firefox users are much less likely to allow their browser to report telemetry and the stats are therefore probably quite a bit under-reported.
True. Also if Apple didn't disallow (true) Firefox from their platform, that would probably equate to some amount of additional FF users.