Mozilla this week acknowledged that it is test-driving a Firefox app for Apple's mobile platform.
"At Mozilla, we put our users first and want to provide an independent choice for them on any platform," the company said in a brief statement. "We are in the early stages of experimenting with something that allows iOS users to be able to choose a Firefox-like experience."
In March 2013, Mozilla's vice president of product, Jay Sullivan, told a SXSW crowd that, until Cupertino adjusts its attitude toward third-party browsers, Firefox would avoid iOS.
Six months earlier, the company pulled Firefox Home from the iTunes App Store, in what Mozilla said was an effort to focus on other resources and projects. That app was less of a browser, though, and more useful for bookmark and tab syncing.
Because Mozilla couldn't port its own rendering and javascript engines to Apple's system, Sullivan said the company wouldn't "provide users the full Firefox experience on iOS" at the time.
It remains unclear what has changed in less than two years, or how Mozilla plans to make the jump to Apple. A spokeswoman declined to comment further.
Google's Chrome is available on iOS already, but as PCMag's Sascha Segan explained at launch, "the new Chrome for iOS is not a browser. It is a Chrome-like skin over Apple's Safari, and it will be slower than Apple's Safari."
The company has been busy lately, just last month announcing Yahoo as the default search engine in its Firefox browser going forward. The five-year deal will bring Yahoo search to Mozilla's desktop and mobile Web browsers in the U.S. beginning this month.
Outside of North America, Mozilla is tapping Yandex Search for Russian users, and continues to use Baidu in China. Firefox fans around the world will be still be able to use alternate, built-in search options in the browser—in the U.S., for example, Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, eBay, Amazon, Twitter, and Wikipedia are supported.
Last month, Mozilla celebrated 10 years of Firefox. PCMag sat down with Firefox Vice President Jonathan Nightingale to talk about the non-profit, open-source organization's plans for the future, and reflections on how far the project has come.