Mozilla CEO: Room to 'Do an Apple' in Mobile Browsing

At the D: Dive Into Mobile conference this afternoon, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs (above) said that while the organization is committed to its Firefox mobile platform, the goal isn't any one specific platform, but instead to create a series of standards that let Web applications become full mobile clients.

"The Web needs to be unlocked for mobile," Kovacs said. The browser doesn't need to be the operating system, but the operating systems needs to incorporate the Web, he said, allowing more openness in everything from applications to mobile payment systems.  

Most mobile apps today access Web content but display it in a platform-specific way. Native apps and the Web both need to live, Kovacs said, but Web apps have been unnecessarily blocked out of most mobile platforms. Web experiences should be able to look and act just like apps.

Conference host Walt Mossberg asked Kovacs about statements from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that HTML5 performance isn't good enough for Web-native apps. Kovacs replied that when Facebook was initially working on mobile apps, the APIs and performance weren't ready; there wasn't even an API for an app to access a phone's camera two years ago.

"Over time the Web will be ready," he said. Web apps are much better than they were two years ago, in particular many new APIs, JavaScript performance, and GPU performance. Today, he said, there are 25 to 27 different APIs for connecting Web apps to the devices, covering issues such as connecting to the camera and accelerometer.

It took 22 years for the world to amass two billion Web users, Kovacs noted, but the next two billion will come in the next four to seven years, mostly from developing countries. Although we think we have lots of apps, he said, choice matters, especially for local content. There are many more websites than mobile apps, and it is Mozilla's mission to stimulate the ecosystem and open up the standards.

Kovacs said the first Firefox phones will launch by June in Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain. Eleven more are set for the rest of the year. In 2014, he said, such phones are likely to come to the United States. Sprint is a partner.

The operating system will be open source so carriers can add their own content on top of it, but a carrier can't lock it down and control it.

Asked why there is no Firefox for iOS, Kovacs answered that Apple's policy that all browsers must use its Web rendering engine is the stumbling block and Mozilla won't make a policy switch to use someone else's Web renderer. 

He also was critical of the job that browser makers have done in creating mobile browsers in general, saying everyone designed their desktop browsers for growing screens and are now just shrinking these for mobile. Instead, he said, there is room for someone to "do an Apple" on the whole browsing experience.