French developer sues Apple for poor HTML5 support in iOS

The French company Nexedi says it has filed a lawsuit against Apple to get the company better support for HTML5 in iOS. Now developers would still be dependent on Apple’s own Webkit library.

According to Nexedi, any browser not based on this version of Webkit will be immediately removed from the App Store by Apple. This is because Apple does not allow such browsers in the App Store, the company writes in a blog post. Furthermore, the company claims that current performance of HTML5 in iOS lags far behind other platforms. For example, various functions would not be available, such as participating in certain video conferences and watching videos in the webm format.

Nexedi says it can’t recommend other browsers to its customers either, because the performance of HTML5 in Chrome for iOS is the same as in Safari due to Apple’s Webkit requirement. In addition, it is also not possible to move away from iOS, because the iPhone is very strongly represented in certain markets, according to the company. As a result, Nexedi would now have to invest a lot of time and money in backporting HTML5 code for iOS.

A few years ago, a French law is said to have been passed to protect small companies like Nexedi against unfair contracts from large parties. The French company believes that it also applies to Apple’s App Store contract and therefore hopes for a good outcome of the case. Nexedi is a software company with 35 employees and focuses on the development of open source software.