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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."

18 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Safari! Woo hoo! by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're number three! :-)

  2. firecow by fred+fleenblat · · Score: 5, Funny

    firefox/firefly I'm getting really confused...

  3. News? by billieja2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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%.

    1. Re:News? by hchaos · · Score: 4, Funny
      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%.
      I think that the news here is that they anticipate that Firefox's market share will soon become newsworthy.
  4. Mozilla by crayz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does this combine Mozilla Suite(Seamonkey) & Firefox data, or is it being separated?

  5. Browser Threshold by TruePaige · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. It's easy gain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When you in single percents it's easy to gain a couple more.

    Linux is gaining on Windows for 14 years now and still is in single digits :-)

  7. You can thank me for that... by IcarusMoth · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because I rebrand and reskin Firefox then install it on my clients' computers as "Internet Extreme". My saavier clients like how IEx prevents popups and spyware, and also like that it is from Microsoft so they know they can trust it.
    Ahhh saavy clients...

  8. The real test... by RUFFyamahaRYDER · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The real test will be when the new IE 7 comes out... I predict (and hope) that FireFox will continue to gain even when the "new and improved" IE get's here. http://www.getfirefox.com/

  9. Even better in Europe by sl956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Please remember that this 8.71 percent comes from a study of mostly north-american websites (NetApplication clients).
    A similar study is done each month in Europe and the figures are quite different:
    Finland 28.96%
    Czech Rep. 24.72%
    Germany 24.18%
    Hungary 20.37%
    Poland 20.13%
    Sweden 15.91%
    Switzerland 15.83%
    France 15.12%
    Austria 14.59%
    Estonia 14.24%
    Greece 14.00%
    Romania 12.73%
    Belgium 12.61%
    U.K. 12.29%
    Ireland 11.64%
    Portugal 11.39%
    Norway 11.20%
    Spain 10.82%
    Italy 10.38%
    Netherland 10.20%
    Monaco 09.08%
    Luxemburg 08.95%
    Danemark 08.48%
    Lituania 03.68%
    src: XiTi
  10. Statistics and Trends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:did anyone notice the Microsoft logo?? by speights_pride! · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, as I'm using Adblock ;-)

  12. 100% by only 2013! (Gotta love math). Death to IE! by wernst · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.

    Of course, this means that (assuming 1% growth per month for easy math):

    14% by Jan 2006
    26% by Jan 2007
    38% by Jan 2008
    50% by Jan 2009
    62% by Jan 2010
    74% by Jan 2011
    86% by Jan 2012
    98% by Jan 2013
    100% by Mar 2013

    Sounds about right: no more IE in only 8 short years. The math couldn't possibly be wrong...

  13. My solution by CdBee · · Score: 4, Funny

    "This cleanup is free. The next one, if the need for it is caused by bad practice, won't be"

    - follow this up with standard teach-in about browser security, risks posed by using the mainstream browser that is widely targeted, introduction of a different browser that doesn't have these particular problems

    - provide printed sheet about system security for them to read if the teach-in wasn't clear enough

    - install Firefox and AdBlock with a default set of REGEX filters to kill the worst excesses, and suggest they play with NoScript for ultimate safety, now that the browser-crashing bug that it sometimes triggers has been fixed.
    Bingo

    --
    I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
  14. Opera stats still hidden by takeya · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm still waiting for the day when Opera releases a version of their browser that identifies by default as Opera instead of IE. It will be really interesting to see how much this impacts both IE's and Opera's market stats.

    1. Re:Opera stats still hidden by jmlsteele · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not entirely. Some scripts will actually detect Opera as IE when spoofing, but any decent stats program will detect it properly as Opera.

      Here are the HTTP_USER_AGENT lines for Opera for the various Identity methods.

      Opera: Opera/8.01 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
      Mozilla: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Opera 8.01
      IE: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.01

      As you can clearly see "Opera" is mentioned in all 3, including the version number.

  15. Exclusivity? by SeventyBang · · Score: 4, Insightful



    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.


  16. Hey, you're missing some numbers there. by Stankatz · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...IE's share shrank to 86.56 percent from 87.23 percent.
    I think that's supposed to be 86.563348237 percent from 87.23172395 percent. Also, someone should invent a symbol that stands for "percent" so we wouldn't have to spell it out every time.