Will Firefox Launch an iPhone App Upon Steve Jobs Playground?

(Image Credit: Mobile Computing)

Ever since Opera was able to put Opera Mini upon the iPhone, bloggers, journalists and tweetaholics have been experiencing “geek shock” that El Jobso would approve another browser outside of Safari.

Opera mini has been downloaded over 1 million times in the app store over the past 3 days and many iLovers have made Opera their default iBrowser (well, unless you click on a link within an email in which case Safari still takes over).

But enough of the Opera stats, I’m here to write about Firefox!

Last year Firefox announced plans to create an iPhone app which would allow users to surf the net outside of Apple’s native Safari.

With Opera’s approval, I was hoping that the company would seriously consider building an iPhone app, as that would give users 3 1/2 choices when it comes to iBrowsing (currently iFans only have Safari and Opera, plus “remixes” of Safari on the iPhone).

Unfortunately it looks like Firefox isn’t interested in building an app upon Steve Jobs playground, despite the fact that users are asking for a Firefox browser for their iDevice.

(Fierce Mobile Content) Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox browser, said it does not plan to build an iPhone version of its Firefox Mobile product, and Bolt browser maker Bitstream and NetFront browser maker Access have similar positions.

“Our understanding of browsers in the iPhone App Store is that a ‘full’ Web browser like Firefox that incorporates its own Web rendering and JavaScript engines would be prohibited,” said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s vice president of product. “We have no insight into any arrangement between Apple and Opera.”

So it looks like Firefox is not going to invest in an iPhone browser after all, despite Opera’s success with the device.

Currently the only browser business interested in the iPhone who has a chance of getting approved is Skyfire, who is really popular on mobile phones powered by Windows 6.x (which will become extinct thanks to Windows 7 Mobile).

While I think Firefox is making a HUGE mistake by ignoring the iPhone, hopefully the company has more success with Android devices (which are starting to become really popular amongst my extended family).