The Firefox browser is now shipping with support for HTML5 videos compressed with the H.264 codec to users of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and Samsung phones with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

This is the first time the open source browser has supported the widely used video codec. Firefox's developer, Mozilla, was reluctant to support H.264 because the open standard was not available on a royalty free basis; implementers of decoders have to pay for a license to use the various patents that cover H.264. Instead, the group hoped the Google-owned VP8 codec would suffice; a hope buoyed by Google's announcement that Chrome would drop its support for H.264 and concentrate on VP8.

Google never did remove H.264 from Chrome—the browser supports it to this day—and a substantial fraction, possibly 80 percent or more, of HTML5 video on the Web uses the H.264 codec. The growth of mobile platforms made the demand for H.264 support even more acute: hardware acceleration of H.264 decompression is all but universal on mobile devices and taking advantage of this hardware support is essential for providing acceptable battery life.

These concerns led Mozilla to change its policy in March and start work on providing H.264 support in Firefox. The group is sidestepping the licensing concerns by taking advantage of the system frameworks provided on Android that expose the hardware accelerated H.264 features. By leaving the decoding up to the hardware, Mozilla also leaves the license costs up to the hardware suppliers.

The result? H.264 in Firefox on Android just works, though support is currently limited on pre-Android 4.1 devices due to bugs. Mozilla plans to enable support for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and 3.x (Honeycomb) devices in due course.

H.264 support won't be limited to mobile devices, either. Work is also under way to support H.264 in desktop Firefox, using Media Foundation in Windows Vista, 7, and 8, GStreamer in Linux, and AV Foundation in OS X.