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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."
We're number three! :-)
firefox/firefly I'm getting really confused...
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.
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...
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/
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:
src: XiTi
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.
No, as I'm using Adblock ;-)
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...