14 DAY TRIAL // With Opera calling it quits and deserting over to WebKit, Mozilla is the only cross-platform browser maker left developing its own browser engine.
After Opera announced its decision, many at Mozilla were critical of the move, but it's only now that the company has made it clear it has no plans to develop a WebKit-based browser.
Which, in essence, means there won't be any iOS Firefox any time soon, at least not until Apple lifts its ban on rendering engines in the App Store. That is not going to happen for the foreseeable future.
During a talk at SXSW, Mozilla said that it had no plans to return to iOS and that it was not working on anything for the platform.
Mozilla did have a presence in the App Store, which is why it mentions "returning," the Firefox Home app, but it pulled it in September 2012.
Last year, Mozilla showed a demo of a browser for the iPad built on WebKit, but that project didn't go anywhere and it's clear that the idea has no traction at the company.
It's a matter of principle for Mozilla, though it stuck to the technical aspects when explaining its decision. Mozilla wouldn't be able to build the browser it wants to on the Apple platform, because it wouldn't be able to use its HTML layout engine and its JavaScript engine.
Other browser makers made the compromise and adopted the WebKit engine in Safari alongside the neutered JavaScript engine Apple allows them to use.
Google and more recently Opera did this. But for Mozilla, it's too much of a compromise. But this principled decision may end up being a bad one for Mozilla.
On Android, Firefox has a very, very small market share. It's not gaining much on desktops either. The up and coming Firefox OS could be a boon, but there are plenty of things that could go wrong.
Breaking into the duopoly that is iOS and Android is hard, if not impossible, Microsoft has been trying to do it for years, BlackBerry is now waking up to the threat as well.
Mozilla is capable of compromising though, after holding out for a couple of years, it decided to start supporting the proprietary H.264 video codec in Firefox since it was the only one left fighting.
The same could happen with regard to iOS support a couple of years down the line, though it may be too late by then.