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Firefox Gains on IE Again in June
kurtz_tan writes "Infoworld reported that Firefox increased its market share to 8.71 percent, up from 8 percent in May, while IE's share shrank to 86.56 percent from 87.23 percent. This is according to NetApplications.com. Since the beginning of the year, Firefox has increased its market share every month between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, mostly at the expense of IE. This means Firefox would cross the 10% market share by October."
Is it really news though? I like to see these stats as much as the next guy, but i mean, give me a shout when it hits 25%.
Well, as we can see, this starts with the most tech savvy users switching and continues to less tech savvy users, but by the 10% barrier, will enough people be even tech savvy enough to understand that the Big e isn't the internet? That's my major concern right there. People like that are the ones that keep me up at night, fearing for the future of our society that continues to depend more on technology but has less and less understanding of it.
Since the beginning of the year, Firefox has increased its market share every month between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, mostly at the expense of IE. This means Firefox would cross the 10% market share by October.
No, that doesn't mean anything. If the trend continues then Firefox will cross the 10% threshold, but in order to determine whether that will realistically happen, one has to examine the underlying reasons for the current trend.
What are those factors? My guess would be that home users are continuing to adopt Firefox in favor of IE, and so I think it would be fair to say that it is likely that Firefox's growth will continue.
However, I think Firefox will hit a stumbling block when it comes to the edge of "business workstation" browser territory. Unlike the article predicts, I don't think Firefox will begin to take over, and at that point one could expect the growth trend to slow as the home user region alone becomes saturated (whether that will happen before or after 10%--probably after--is uncertain).
IE is too well integrated into the operating system and works too well within the Windows environment for it to be displaced. When a company admin wants to lock down users to limited access so that they spend their time working and not surfing the Internet, why install Firefox?
At my office the Internet access is controlled by Websense. I use a limited number of applications (Outlook and proprietary software) in order to do my job. There is no need to upgrade/replace IE with Firefox because I don't visit unsafe sites, I don't need a lower impact browser, and I don't need Firefox's features. To install another browser (trust me, I would love to get Opera on there myself) would, in all aspects, unneeded.
It's going to take a lot more than the current advantages of Firefox for the browser to supplant IE in the workplace, and there's no telling where IE7 will move the standards (hah!) bar. In a business environment, there's a huge advantage given to that whole integrated-browser-into-the-OS thing.
The only issue here is if the momentum will keep going strong, or will they lose focus or face obstacles? One of their main advantages is security, but with popularity comes more people trying to penetrate security.
Voice your opinion!
Do the statistics allow for overlap; i.e.people who use multiple browsers? I realize that may be a small percentage, but if the published numbers are going to be to the second decimal point, it's got to weigh in there somewhere.
Those of us who use three (or more), either in regular use or for the purposes of testing - and just get accustomed to using multiples - should factor somewhere.
That's just browsers hitting the W3Schools web site, which, as they say right at the top of your link, is a "special" website. It is certainly not representative of the entire Internet.