Firefox Achieves 10% Global Market Share

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is reporting that according to OneStat's latest figures, Firefox has passed the 10 percent market share mark. At 11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent, but it's heading in the right direction. The report also mentions some odd geographical variation: Firefox's market share is almost three times higher in the US than UK, for example." From the article: "...other companies have noticed a decline in Firefox over recent months. Last month, Web applications provider NetApplications reported that the open source browser's share of the market dropped by 0.7 percentage points from August to September. Although this wasn't the first time that Firefox' share has dropped, RedMonk analyst James Governor said he believes the overall trend for Firefox is upwards."

Comments

Firefox is on the up!!

[Bongoots]

Download Mozilla Firefox!

Mozilla's browsers global usage share is still growing according to OneStat.com

Amsterdam - November 2 2005 - OneStat.com (www.onestat.com), the number one provider of real-time web analytics, today reported that Mozilla's browsers have a total global usage share of 11.51 percent. The total usage share of Mozilla increased 2.82 percent since April 2005. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still dominates the global browser market with a global usage share of 85.45 percent which is 1.18 percent less as at the end of April.

"The global usage share of Mozilla's browsers is still growing and it seems that Netscape users and some Internet Explorer users are switching to the Firefox version. It also looks like that browser users of Internet Explorer for Apple's Mac are switching to Safari because the global usage share is still growing. It is also interesting to see that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has less global usage share in the USA as in the UK. Mozilla's browsers are more popular in USA and Canada as in the UK" said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.

The most popular browsers on the web are:

1. Microsoft IE = 85.45 %
2. Mozilla Firefox = 11.51 %
3. Apple Safari = 1.75 %
4. Netscape = 0.26 %
5. Opera = 0.77 %

Source: http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox40_bro wser_market_firefox_growing.html

Nearly 17% of Canada, over 14% of the USA and just under 5% of the UK use Firefox!!

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[pmike_bauer]

The order is alphabetical!

1. internet Explorer
2. Firefox
3. Konquerer
4. Netscape
5. Opera

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[theborg1of4]

"I disagree, why should the coder HAVE to do work arounds/fixes just to get his site to work with non standards compliant browsers?"

Because the coder typically doesn't have the last say in such matters. It is up to the customer requesting the web site to decide what will be supported and how. Your militant stance would not be well received, seeing as you would be asking them to alienate upwards of 85% of their own possible customer base.

If you're developing for your own pleasure and don't care who uses your site, then it's of course a different scenario. But if the coder makes his livelihood off what he constructs and wants to eat and make car payments, then snapping to his customer's requirements is probably a safer bet.

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[mobets]

Why should his viewers HAVE to install extra software just to get his site to look nice, when most other sites work fine?

They shouldn't. Microsoft should fix it and release the fix with the rest of the updates on tuesday. Then the users won't see this message any more. If every website had a similar message, Microsoft might get tired of hearing about it from their users (or the PC makers that are more likely to get the phone call) and fix the problem.

As long as web developers are willing to bend over backwards for MS, why should MS take the time to fix something that is more than likely helping them hold their dominance at the moment?

Re:Donations accepted?

[dasil003]

Of course they need donations:

Donate Today!

Re:Donations accepted?

[dslauson]

They would be more than happy to take your donation.

And it's free, too!

[roscivs]

With Opera recently becoming free (as in beer), there's no better time to switch. Most of the important functionality from Firefox is there (and incidentally was there first), even most of the things that require plugins for Firefox (automatic saving of tabs, mouse gestures, ability to "undo" closing a page, etc). And it has far better (in my opinion) single-key shortcuts (no CTRL or ALT modifier required) to do things like maneuver around a page without using the mouse, switch tabs, increase/decrease font size, go forward/back, and so forth.

If you're at all serious, make the leap--I think it's well worth it.

In Germany Firefox achieves over 30% ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... according to figures from http://www.spiegel.de/ and http://www.heise.de/ ( http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/64790 => 40,2 % in sptember 2005) - two of the most popular .de-websites.

Re:Good news but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, they were talking about the United Kingom's low uptake - the uptake of Firefox has actually been stellar in Poland, Germany and Finland, and far higher than in the USA.

Re:Apple's Safari Is Up Too

[ZachPruckowski]

It would be, except that not everyone with a Mac uses Safari. For instance, I have Safari, but I mostly use firefox. There are people with Macs who use Internet Explorer (the older ones that had mac support), and there are even people who still use OS 9. So I think we can assume that anyone using Safari uses a Mac, but that doesn't give us an upper bound of who uses macs, just a lower one.

Finland 34 %, Germany 24.1 %

[TimoP]

Europe is far ahead. Take a look at Xiti's map: http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement11.asp

Re:Good news but...

[arkhan_jg]

Actually, it doesn't suprise me in the least. According to symantec in march, 25% of the world's PC zombies were in the UK. (strangely though, the UK has only a handful of the direct spammers)

Both the high zombie rate and the low firefox use shows that computer literacy in the UK is somewhat lacking, despite the high broadband uptake. I do a lot of work on people's computers privately, as well as being a sysadmin for my day job, and virtually all of them wouldn't know what firefox was if it bit them on the ass. If it didn't come installed on the computer when they bought it, with a thick manual, then they're not interested. They also tend to hang onto computers for a looong time. I was fixing a windows 95a machine only last week.

They regularly call internet explorer 'the internet' - as in, "it doesn't work when I click on 'the internet', it just says some message which I don't remember. Is it broken?" It's no surprise to me that most people haven't investigated firefox here, they don't even install a firewall, spyware or virus checker.

Re:Sad thing is...

[rbarreira]

Here is the solution for that - Portable Firefox. It doesn't require installing.

Re:Browser Strength

[shudde]

I don't know if Firefox is really much more secure in terms of virus/spyware than Internet Explorer or not.

I think you'll find that IE's reliance on ActiveX plays a major part in the difference. Personally I'm running Firefox with the NoScript extension for that extra bit of protection (blocks javascript by default with easy right-click access granting for trusted sites). While I presume you can block JS in IE, I doubt the functionality exists to quickly enable it on a case by case basis.

Of course I'm not really especially concerned with virus/spyware infecting my OS but I won't rehash that tired old argument.

Re:FF not 4 everyone

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Try Opera.

It does just about everything FF does and more while taking up much less RAM and uses lots less CPU.

Doesn't have to reach 85.5

[kurtmckee]

At 11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent

No it doesn't. (85.5-11.5)/2 = 37.7% Firefox only need another 37.7% to surpass Internet Explorer's illegal market share.