Time for another update of the "state of the browser" when it comes to WebRTC.
A year has passed since I last updated the browser support post here. There's much to tell.
This time, the nuances have changed dramatically. Let's start....
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox
Both Chrome and Firefox now support WebRTC--or at last most of it. These are nuances--things around interoperability and behavior of this or that API call, dealing with camera resolutions or how the data channel works and behaves.
In the larger picture, it seems the industry has moved on--new releases that just stabilize and add new functionality for WebRTC aren't news anymore.
Opera
Opera has left the game. Since they decided to switch to WebKit they have simply stopped dealing with WebRTC. Count them out for now.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Microsoft has made no progress whatsoever. They did add WebGL support at long last. This indicates to me that we have at least a year of wait ahead of us until anything interesting comes out of Microsoft with regards to WebRTC.
Two additional notes:
1. If you thought Chrome Frame would help, you are in for a nasty surprise--Google decided to stop supporting it in 2014. I guess they are comfortable enough with their market share to not care about IE
2. The whole mess around H.264 with Cisco pulling a rabbit out the hat in the form of an open source, royalty-free binary codec implementation? This might end up causing faster adoption by Microsoft, if H.264 gets selected as the mandatory codec for WebRTC.
Apple Safari
No change here. Apple being Apple, is saying nothing. It is also no surprise that iOS 7 doesn't include WebRTC.
If you ask me, iOS 8 won't have WebRTC either.
Mobile Apps
Mobile Apps are adopting WebRTC in different ways. A year ago, we saw the likes of AddLive and TokBox--the API vendors--incorporating WebRTC into their mobile SDKs; now we see it prevalent in almost all API vendors and also in real apps--either indirectly via API vendors or directly.
An interesting case here is Vonage, who simply ported and repurposed WebRTC for their mobile needs.
Expect this trend to continue--after all, apps is the consumption model of mobile.
Mobile Browsers
Mobile browsers are starting to support WebRTC. Both Google and Mozilla now have Chrome and Firefox browsers out there for Android that support WebRTC. It works like magic, and is aligned with their desktop versions in feature set and level of support.
Nothing for iOS at the moment.
Mobile Operating Systems
On the operating system front, there are 3 operating systems that are interesting:
1. Android, with its latest 4.4 KitKat release. This release now supports Chromium webviews. Translated for your benefit, this means that you can build a native app, open a webview to render HTML5 code. No WebRTC support in it yet--it will probably get added in a later release
2. Firefox OS. Now with real commercial phones being sold, should have WebRTC on it, though I haven't seen any indication that it does or does not. Time will tell
3. Tizen, by Samsung. Rumors out there says it supports WebRTC, but I can't confirm it. If you ask me--it probably doesn't
Don't expect iOS or Windows to have anything in this department any time soon.
What Does the Future Have in Store?
We're back to the codec wars, which hopefully will get settled this week one way or another.
If H.264 is picked, expect Microsoft to accelerate their efforts; mobile vendors to support it a bit better in older devices and Apple...to be Apple.
If VP8 is picked, expect no real change besides the usual fast iterations of Google and Mozilla; coupled with more vendors using WebRTC.
