Mozilla says no Firefox for the iPhone
Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox browser, crushed the hopes of many today by announcing that it had no plans to produce a version of their browser for the iPhone, though the company left the door open to the iPad.
Mozilla has a ready-made alternative to its browser for the iPhone iOS platform, known as Firefox Home for iPhone, and the company will continue to work and improve that product for the time being. Firefox Home is an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch based on the Firefox Sync technology. It allows users of either device to access their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks and recent tabs. It also includes Firefox’s “Awesomebar” location bar. Firefox Home is not a browser; the application launches pages in either a Webkit Web viewer or in Safari.
Mozilla made the announcement in a blog post, in which it said, “People have asked about adding more browserlike features to Firefox Home, but there are technical and logistical restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to build the full Firefox browser for the iPhone. We are focused on building Firefox Home as a rich, cloud-based application and making it a valuable product that people will continue to love and use.”
Mozilla also said that they may be developing versions of Firefox Home for the iPad, as well as for the Symbian and Blackberry systems, according to a CNET story, though plans seemed a little vague. This would seem to be the end of development on a planned, according to rumors, Mozilla browser product for the iPhone, which was a possible part of the project known as the Fennec browser, in development mainly for use on Android smartphones. Some analysts are speculating that the announcement really means that Mozilla is moving away from any development of browsers for mobile platforms, and that the company will attempt to limit mobile development to Firefox Home only.
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