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Firefox For iOS Gets Tracking Protection, Firefox Focus For Android Gets Tabs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Mozilla today released Firefox 9.0 for iOS and updated Firefox Focus for Android. The iOS browser is getting tracking protection, improved sync, and iOS 11 compatibility. The Android privacy browser is getting tabs. You can download the former from Apple's App Store and the latter from Google Play. This is the first time Firefox has offered tracking protection on iOS, and Nick Nguyen, vice president of product at Mozilla, notes that it's finally possible "thanks to changes by Apple to enable the option for 3rd party browsers." This essentially means iPhone and iPad users with Firefox and iOS 11 will have automatic ad and content blocking in Private Browsing mode, and the option to turn it on in regular browsing. This is the same feature that's available in Firefox for Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as the same ad blocking technology used in Firefox Focus for Android and iOS.
According to the latest browser usage stats, Firefox for Android has only 0.04% of the browser market! To put that in perspective, Chrome for Android has 29.5%. iOS Safari has about 10%. UC Browser for Android has 7.9%. Samsung Internet has about 3%. Opera Mini has 2.7%. Android Browser 4.4 has 0.81%. Even IE Mobile 11 has 0.29%!
Firefox for iOS isn't listed among those stats, as far as I can tell. Maybe that could be because it has pretty much no market share at all? I can't see it being higher than Firefox for Android.
Mozilla has totally dropped the ball on mobile web browsing. It's pretty sad when Firefox for Android has 0.04% of the market, but even an obscure browser like IE Mobile 11 manages to get 0.29% of it!
Maybe the situation would be different if the resources wasted on Firefox OS were instead dedicated toward real improvements for both the desktop and mobile versions of the Firefox web browser. That said, desktop Firefox isn't doing too well either. It has only about 5% of the market, and its percentage is expected to drop soon thanks to the disruptive Firefox 57 release that's due out in November which will end support for non-WebExtensions extensions.
Ublock Origin and Ad-Block Plus are both available as add-ons for Firefox for Android. That to me is FFA's killer feature: add-ons. The mobile versions of Chrome and Safari don't have them because FU that's why. They don't even try to compete in that area, as they know most people will just use the browser that came with the phone. Makes one wonder if Chrome would even have add-ons on its desktop browser had it not had to compete with a then-already established Firefox, which did.
I recommend Firefox for Android for anyone who doesn't want to accept whatever Google serves them. Would you use a desktop browser without ad-block and other add-ons available for it? No? Then why do you accept it on your mobile device.
I'm not in the tank for Firefox. I don't even have it installed on my PC. To me its the only browser that makes sense to use on Android right now, though. Its not perfect, but it doesn't deliberately deprive you of add-ons (including ad-blockers) to make money off of you the way Chrome does. Chrome is taking you for granted on the Android platform.
Techies really should be pushing Firefox for Android, at least until such a point as another viable regularly updated contender offers add-ons as well on that platform.