After the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into effect, Mozilla said that the number of Firefox users continued to grow as European users were required to actively choose their default browser on mobile devices. Through these so-called "browser selection interfaces," about 6 million users switched to Firefox instead of continuing to use Safari, which comes preinstalled on iPhones, or Chrome on Android devices.
Mozilla said that the increase was most obvious on Apple devices: due to DMA, Firefox usage increased by 113% on iPhone and iPad, while the increase on Android was only 12%. Industry analysts believe that this is not so much the strong dissatisfaction of users with Safari, but that Apple and Google have adopted completely different product strategies when actually implementing the "browser selection interface".
On Android devices, the browser selection interface will only be displayed after first booting or restoring factory settings; on iPhone and iPad, as long as users open Safari for the first time, the selection interface will pop up and ask to choose among multiple browsers. Since this design covers a large number of existing iOS users, Apple's implementation of DMA obligations was considered from the beginning to reach more users than Google.
The relevant obligations of the DMA are effective from March 2024. Mozilla said that it not only benefited significantly from the number of users, but also had "surprises" in terms of retention: According to its internal calculations, Firefox's user retention rate has increased by 5 times compared with before DMA.
A recent DMA implementation effectiveness evaluation report released by the European Commission shows that other browser manufacturers have reported similar trends, but the report did not disclose specific numbers. Earlier, vendors such as Aloha, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi all reported a significant uptick in user installs in the first days and weeks after DMA was enforced.
In addition to traditional browser manufacturers, DuckDuckGo, which focuses on privacy protection, has also benefited from this. The company revealed in a submission to the UK government on "how to maintain competition in online searches" that it has seen an increase of about 40% in users choosing the default browser on Android thanks to the browser selection interface brought about by DMA.
Mozilla has also made submissions to the UK government on the same issue. Given that both themselves and DuckDuckGo have benefited greatly from DMA, the two companies are now calling for the introduction of a similar browser selection interface mechanism in the UK market. DuckDuckGo believes that this type of selection interface should be displayed to users once a year, and Google should be prohibited from continuing to use the "Switch back to Google" prompt in Chrome to induce users to return to its search and browsing services.
Mozilla advocates that the UK should allow local users to start seeing the browser selection interface in 2026, and simultaneously introduce a similar mechanism at the default search engine level and implement it through mandatory regulatory requirements, rather than relying on voluntary commitments by relevant companies. While affirming DMA, Mozilla also expressed its dissatisfaction: it hopes that similar competitive measures can be extended to the desktop browser market, and accuses Microsoft of using "deceptive design" when promoting Edge to guide and lock user choice.