28% Faster: The Blink Prototype vs. Apple's iOS Browser Engine
A Blink-based browser engine prototype on iOS performed 28% faster than WebKit in benchmark tests, highlighting how Apple's requirement that all iOS browsers use its WebKit engine limits performance and competition. The Open Web Advocacy organization argues this demonstrates why regulators should mandate equal access to browser engines on iOS.
Background
- Apple requires all browsers on iOS to use its own WebKit engine — Chrome, Firefox, and others on iPhone/iPad are just skins over Safari's engine, not their own rendering engines.
- This "browser engine ban" means competing browser technologies (Google's Blink, Mozilla's Gecko) cannot run on iOS, limiting performance, feature parity, and competition.
- The Open Web Advocacy group built a prototype using Blink (the engine behind Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Samsung Internet) on iOS and claims it loaded web apps 28% faster than the equivalent WebKit implementation.
- The EU's Digital Markets Act now forces Apple to allow alternative browser engines in Europe, but the rest of the world remains subject to the ban — the article argues this performance gap shows why the restriction should end globally.