Firefox Share Slipped in July for the First Time

prostoalex writes "Between June and July of this year, Firefox lost 0.64% of the users, while Microsoft IE gained the same amount, leaving other browsers at their usual zero point something share. Could recent security problems and lack of stability, reported by some users, lead to the decline of the browser that just passed 80 million downloads?" I think the other thing to remember is that while ~8% seems a lot, there's a still a huge amount of ground to cover -- and a number change like this is statistical noise. I should point out that my issue with noise isn't the absolute numbers; it's the somewhat inadequate measurements tools for this.

Comments

Marketshare Stabilized

[Thanatopsis]

It looks to me as though Firefox's natural marketshare has stabilized. It's just not a large as we hoped.

Re:Marketshare Stabilized

[ugmoe]

Why should I care what browser other people are using?

Re:Marketshare Stabilized

[yfkar]

You shouldn't.
Unless you're a web designer. In that case you'd want them to use anything but IE.

Re:Marketshare Stabilized

[AvitarX]

Because you like designers to use not activex applications.

Re:Marketshare Stabilized

[Bullfish]

This is a bit like wailing over a one game losing streak. If the trend continues for six to eight months,then maybe there might be a cause for concern. In the meantime, it's interesting, but not a trend.

New computer purchases?

[darylb]

Could be that it's the time of year for lots of people to buy new computers (back to school, lots of deals to be had), none of which SHIP with Firefox. And it may just take a bit of IE use to remind them why they need to get to mozilla.org after all.

Pseudopod

[Stanistani]

A few of the folks I set up with Firefox have gone back to IE because their default browser settings changed with a Windows Update, and they were not interested enough to change them back.

Then the spyware came back...

I tried

[thc69]

Don't blame me. I recently got a die-hard IE/OE user to switch to FF/TB. He was tired of paying me my standard rates to come and clean spyware...

Hemos has it right

[Otter]

This is statistical noise, pure and simple. There is no story here.

Re:The reason for the downturn.

[Evro]

That would account for a decline in the rate of downloads, but not a decline in use. Maybe millions of web developers testing IE7 is lowering Firefox's share, or maybe people tried Firefox, didn't like it, and went back to whatever they'd been using.

Re:The reason for the downturn.

[superpulpsicle]

These statistics came from the summer time technically. Wait till september when people go back to school etc.

Re:How?

[Golias]

I question these numbers in general.

Apple has something like a 2% to 4% share of the sales market (depending on who you ask) and something like a 5% to 8% share of active personal computers in use (depending on who you ask).

Given that nearly all current Apple systems are running OS X, and well over half of them are running Safari, how do they arrive at "Less than 0%" of users for all browsers other than IE and Firefox?

Even using the most anti-Apple zealotry numbers available, Safari use has gotta be at least 1%.

I also think Firefox use has got to be a bit higher than the 8% claimed here. Sure, IE is "what's there" on a new Windows installation, but I've yet to meet anybody who actually prefers IE. Sure, I could see some people jumping ship to it when the new version ships (if it even comes close to delivering current promises), but the current state of IE is that it is inferior in almost every way that matters to Firefox.

Re:Noise my ass

[ThosLives]

I think people are forgetting that a change in market share does not mean a loss in installed base. For instance, if the current total market is 1000 and IE has 900 users and FF has 100, IE has 90% and FF has 10%. Now, let's say the market grows to 2000 and IE has 1850 and FF has 150. The new market shares are 92.5% and 7.5%; FF's market share dropped 2.5%, but their installed base went up 50%.

Simply looking at market share doesn't tell you anything except for relative adoption with respect to the overall market, and that may or may not even be a useful measurement. It depends on if you care about relative share or absolute adoption, really.

Re:The reason for the downturn.

[arth1]

The first time your average users hit a site that doesn't work with Browser X (be it Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Amaya or whatever), they will try the first other browser available, which is likely to be IE. And then they'll never look back until they encounter pages that won't work in IE.

It's unfortunate, and arguably isn't the best thing the users can do, but as long as there's enough sites out there that require IE, users will switch to IE, even from "better" browsers.

Regards,
--
*Art

It was me, sorry

[digitalgiblet]

Geeze, guys I'm really sorry. It was me. I bought a new computer with XP (long-time critic, first time user) and actually liked the way IE rendered text. I SWEAR I'm planning to go back to using Firefox ANY DAY NOW. The numbers should be back up then...

Massive surge coming, just look

[0xABADC0DA]

If you look that the traffic for mozilla.org you see a slight downward trend during summer and a massive spike just recently in august, coinciding with the kids going back to school.

So basically the kids using firefox at school stopped for the summer because some of them were using their parents computers that had IE. Now that the kids have gone back to school the ones that weren't using firefox are downloading it in huge numbers (probably mostly to be cool). Next set of statistics will probably show a 2% rise for firefox, imho due to this.