[jeroenhd]

AFAIK the main reason is that only the EU+UK cared about these rules and their market share is too small for companies like Google or Mozilla to invest into.

Because of the way the App Store works, browser engines segregated by region need to be two different apps. That means maintaining two source trees (EU+UK+JP vs worldwide) and two releases with two reviews.

I expect niche browsers to have a go at porting to iOS at some point (I'd love to see a project like Ladybird be the first non-Safari browser on the app store!) but for the major companies it seems like too much of a hassle at the moment.

[agust]

Yeah that's why the bigger the market they can reach with a version using their own engine, the more likely they are to invest into doing it.

Now the question is what's the threshold for this market to be big enough? Maybe Japan's joining in pushes it past that point.