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!!

[GoodOmens]

I just can't wait until we see sites declaring "Page will not render correctly under Microsoft IE".

Too many pages require IE for Firefox to be 100% usefull (although thankfully thats declining).

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[stecoop]

4. Netscape = 0.26 %
5. Opera = 0.77 %

I don't think I would trust statistics from someone that puts .77% below .26%. Talk about making the number look like you want huh?

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!!

[stecoop]

The order is alphabetical!

I am going to start an initiative to recommend that Firefox immediately change the name to Airfox making it the #1 browser on the net.

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[IAmTheDave]

Personally, I find zealotry towards any browser annoying. Fact is that people use different browsers. It's not rocket science to code cross-browser and still be standards compliant.

I mean, yeah, Firefox is vastly superior to IE, but I wouldn't make a website that was incompatible with either.

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[B3ryllium]

But then Microsoft would rename IE to AE - Aardvark Explorer.

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[ZachPruckowski]

Then we add a star or a underscore or something to the beginning of Airfox, therefore coming ahead of them again.

Re:Firefox is on the up!!

[eMartin]

That's pretty lame.

All it really shows is that you can't do what most other sites can, which is design a website that works at least pretty well in most browsers, and by making the message large and bold, it seems more important than your services and you just come off as either too arrogant or too lazy to find a few little workarounds.

After all, at first glance, the only things that seem to be "buggy and broken" are a few alignment problems that anyone who spent a few days learning HTML and CSS1 could have fixed.

If there is actually some part of your site that simply doesn't work, I'd understand if you put a small note on that page, but telling people that the web browser that came with their brand new computer is old/obsolete just makes you look as foolish to them as the sites that tell me I don't have the required browser/plugins installed when I know my version of Firefox and installed plugins can handle the site do to me.

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!!

[Steve Cowan]

>As wierd as it may be to you, Firefox is the NON Standard browser until it gains the majority marketshare.

It's not "the" standard browser, but it is based on published "standards". The contention is that MS takes standards, then deviates from them just enough so that they can control and dominate it. If you have a browser in a dominant position, such as IE, deviating from established standards make those standards meaningless in the first place. Suddenly instead of having a democratic body determining how the web "works" with technologies like http, html, java, css, etc., MS takes their majority marketshare and uses it to their advantage by implementing those technologies, but just a little differently than they're supposed to.

Lazy web designers who only bother to ensure their page works in IE are not doing the world any favours.

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?

Not much further to go

[saskboy]

Once websites start working better with the standard adhering Firefox browser, IE use will begin to drop off as it will annoy users by not showing pages correctly.

"11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent"
It only needs to make it to 50% + 1%, at least that's what Quebec Seperatists would have us believe.

Re:Not much further to go

[LTC_Kilgore]

The only reason I can't use Firefox 100% of the time is Yahoo! Stattracker. I know I am a fantasy football nerd, but this app WILL NOT run under Firefox.

I agree with the parent; if more sites (especially the larger ones) offered proper compliance, it would be much easier for people to give up IE entirely.

I think that part of the problem in getting web developers to support firefox in addition to IE is that IE exists in addition to firefox on 90% of these machines. The logic is probably something like, "Why should we bother re-writing all our code when they can just fire up IE?"

Re:Not much further to go

[schon]

Take my bank for instance. Their online banking doesn't work all that well in any other browser than IE.

Not all banks are like that, and you can always switch banks (or threaten to switch.)

I bank with TD/Canada Trust. I use their internet banking every day, and it works perfectly in Firefox.

Let them know that "Use IE" is not an acceptable answer.

Re:Not much further to go

[nine-times]

I don't foresee web developers dropping support for IE for as long as IE has a substantial install base. They'll start supporting Firefox in addition to IE.

However, this still might be bad news for Microsoft, and may lead to a drop in IE use anyhow. The reason is, if they're supporting Firefox, then they're more likely to be following real standards, and paying attention to their cross-browser incompatibility. This means fewer pages will be IE only, and pages developed for Firefox (and therefore more towards real standards) are very likely to work in any standards-compliant browser.

10% might be enough that poorly-written IE-only pages will be viewed as a problem. Once there's no penalty for using a non-IE browser, we may see more people switching.

Great

[Da Fokka]

At 10% FireFox is starting to become interesting to malware producers. I guess I'll switch to Opera.

Re:Great

[eln]

If you're worried about malware, you should switch to a browser that has little chance of ever becoming the dominant browser. While you might think Opera is the obvious choice for this, I think there's a better one.

FF is winning, who is losing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think an important bit of data would be to have been told in the synopsis whether FF's growth comes at the expense of IE, or the other smaller browsers (Opera, etc). If it's simply killing off the weaker browsers, then the news really isn't that good, but if it's really taking share away from IE, then that really is important.

Re:FF is winning, who is losing

[nine-times]

I think this is one instance where we should care about total usage (which is what I think they mean here). The real reason is that there's no pressure on web developers to code according to W3C standards (as opposed to Microsoft standards) unless their users are using non-Microsoft browsers. Likewise, Microsoft feels no pressure to make their browser compliant with W3C standards until web-developers demand it.

Therefore, if we want a free web where any browser can allow users to interact with any page properly, we, as customers, need to choose non-Microsoft browsers for our daily needs. The point isn't to run MS out of business, but to gain enough hits on major web sites to force Microsoft into standards-complaince.

Apple's Safari Is Up Too

[skrysakj]

And Apple's Safari, supposedly, just hit roughly 3%. Are these percentages
better indicators of OS market share than actual purchase levels which don't
take into account pre-existing machines already in use?

Sad thing is...

[rAiNsT0rm]

A guy in my company was chastised for having Firefox on his computer. He tried to explain he was *helping* but they made him remove it and gave him an earful. Later, I explained all of the features and benefits... they still didn't want it on any company PC's and have no clue as to what it even is. Pretty sad.

Re:Sad thing is...

[ninja_assault_kitten]

No, it's not sad. Allowing employees to install unsupported/unmanaged applications is a critical mistake from a security perspective. By doing so, if and when vulnerabilities are found they must leave it up to the employee to make sure they've applied that patch. Clearly not a good idea.

Re:Sad thing is...

[shish]

Allowing employees to install unsupported/unmanaged applications is a critical mistake from a security perspective

And forcing them to use IE isn't? :p

Re:Sad thing is...

[Nate B.]

Based on conversations I've had with some that work in our corporate headquarters, the Software Business Alliance (SBA) apparently has them convinced that FF, OOo, and friends are "licensed for personal use only" and these people believe the company will be billed a significant sum for such "improperly licensed software".

Perhaps the SBA is carrying on its excellent work in your company as well.

Re:Sad thing is...

[frodo from middle ea]

I don't think the GP was sad that the guy was not allowed to install FF. what he was sad about was that the sysadmins at the workplace had never heard of what firefox is, let alone know that it is much much more secure than IE., which shows not only lack of knowledge on their part as well as poor software auditing practices.

I onced worked at such a place, IE/Outlook only and had to remove FF/TB when I installed it. The problem is , every time a worm was on the loose, these guys would lose half the pcs in the network and kept sending emails about not opening emails containing so-and-so subject.

Having a strict software control policy is good if only it helps in achiving the target goal of a secure and stable network. Otherwise it preety much works like DRM, locks out honest folks and the pirates are not even affected by it.

Higher for some websites.

[HugePedlar]

My website doesn't render properly with IE, and I get quite a few visits from various tech sites. Firefox's market share for my site is therefore around the 20-25% mark.

I'd be interested to see how the content and target audience affects the browser distribution at various websites.

P.S. Please don't visit my site. It's rather dull, and I'd prefer not to break it.

Good news but...

[squoozer]

...how much can we trust those figures? Not a lot I would say. In particular I find the 3* as much FireFox usage in the US compared to the UK disturbing. I would expect the two nations to have roughly the same uptake rate since they are braodly similar. I would also expect other European nations to have a slightly high uptake rate (as has been shown in other result). Perhaps the figure is absolute rather than per 1000 people or maybe there is some error in their recording which causes people browsing from unknown countries to get lumped in with America. Either way without an explanation it casts doubt, in my eye, on the validity of the results.

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.

There are still too many non standard websites....

[jawtheshark]

And writing emails to these guys doesn't help. Just in the last week I came across two websites: Audi Belgium and ALS Verlag . Both sites majorly fuck up on navigation.

The first one pissed me off because the .de and .com versions don't seem to have problems. The second one was problematic because my wife wanted to order something and didn't understand why the website was broken (Firefox is mandatory at my home). She blamed the website though, but I had to show her Internet Explorer so she could order the stuff she needed.

Re:Donations accepted?

[dasil003]

Of course they need donations:

Donate Today!

A ways to go.

[dasil003]

For web developers the important thing is that we've passed the first inflection point: that is, companies can no longer afford to ignore Firefox.

But we're still a long way from the second inflection point: where can stop hacking to support IE (6, maybe 7). That's not happening for a long time, but if you look back 5 years, supporting IE 6 is really a piece of cake compared to IE 5, NS 4, etc.

An interesting side note

[OneSeventeen]

According to somefakewebsite.com, which was created just a few moments ago as an imaginary source of invalid figures for the entertainment of others (or isifeo, as we like to call it here at randomslashdotcomments inc.), The number of windows viruses has decreased by another 1% due in part to the decreased use of web browsers that let websites install software on your computer, and also due to Norton's virus writing labs not keeping up with their anti-virus labs. (but marketing is right on schedule!)

It is also interesting to note that the linux virus ratio has increased to an estimated 0.01% this month, which is partly due to the windows users that recently switched to linux and installed the Bonzai Buddy via Wine, and the number of pop-tarts in my office has just decreased by 1 serving. ... make that 2 servings.

On a more serious note, I wonder what the market share ratio would be like if Internet Explorer wasn't part of the windows operating system.

School kids can't choose...

[DaoudaW]

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

I couldn't verify it in TFA, but my first thought is that millions of kids go back to school around the end of August and begin using a browser which they haven't chosen. So it probably doesn't mean anything except that schools tend to not be early adopters.

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.

Re:Really

[Rinnt]

I have to disagree. This is excellent news for my site...

You should our website. Evertime you place your mouse cursor over some text the entire pages starts jumping around. It's a horrible experience and can really disorient the viewer. The last time I recommended our web master make our website Firefox friendly, I was given the reply of "Firefox is only 2% of the market share". Hmm, good thing I saved the email because now I can reply with the current stats. Plus with a little management on my side, maybe it will happen this time. Thanks Slashdot and ZDNET!

Sex sells

[Isomorph]

I am working to spread the firefox browser.

We all know that sex sells.

So try to look at this site http://www.thelovesearch.com/ using Microsoft
Internet Explore. It will try to convince your to use Firefox using
sex appeal.

If we could convince all porn sites to only support Firefox the battle
would be won in a few weeks.

Or am I dreaming now ??

Opera

[DaPoulpe]

• IE - 85.5%

• Firefox - 11.5%

• Safari - 3%

• Opera - ?

Is Opera UA still stuck on IE by default ?
Would be nice to be able to monitor Opera market share, especialy since it got Free (as in Beer)...

Yes its not the browser

[wombatmobile]

At 10% FireFox is starting to become interesting to malware producers. I guess I'll switch to Opera.

That's what's good about web standards. It's becoming increasingly possibly for you to make a choice like that because content less and less tied to one browser.

FF and Opera are both commited to implementing and supporting web standards like XML, SVG, and CSS. The bigger share they get, the more reason people have to develop standards-compliant content.

A virtuous cycle.

diversity, not domination please

[SuperBanana]

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

You know, it's exactly that attitude of "world domination" that got the Web into the mess it is today. Firefox is not for everyone. I don't want to see it become "what you have to use whether you like it or not", because we've been down that road.

What is nice to see is that users of alternative browsers do make more than single-digit percentages, which of course means they're harder to dismiss. If Apple, The Mozilla Foundation, and Opera can all assure they take the high road at all times with regards to fixing rendering/parsing/etc bugs, MS won't be guaranteed to be the same, but it'll certainly make life easier on web designers.

If designers have to somehow work around 3, 4, 5 different browsers' rendering habits and bugs- things will be a disaster, they'll be frustrated and tempted to just support IE and "the next biggest fish", etc.

Also- I hope all the non-IE browsers are now 'shipping' by default with their own browser strings, not set to pretend to be IE...

familiaritIE?

[dada21]

My employees install Firefox for 90% of our customer base. hey delete all IE icons and references. Yet within weeks almost 90% of the customers are back to using IE. The reason? Familiarity.

I can't figure it out. I'm no OSS fanboi, but IE sucks. Why the addiction for so many?

don't need 85% to beat IE...

[fanblade]

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

Yeah, I can't wait until IE and Firefox are at 85.5%!

Finland 34 %, Germany 24.1 %

[TimoP]

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

Anecdote.

[Rowan_u]

I've had Firefox installed on my wife's computer since before the 1.0 release. I deleted all the shortcuts to IE, and after that just assumed she was using it. Until looking over her shoulder one day, asking her about a movie, I see that she gets to the internet by opening up the start menu, and clicking on windows update . . . shudder. Some people do like Internet Explorer, and will go through extra means to get to it. My wife doesn't know how to recreate desktop shortcuts, but did remember that windows update runs on IE. Hence, she was able to fill up her windows machine with spyware despite my precautions. I haven't figured out what the appeal for IE is yet, maybe she enjoys clicking on the giant stacks of IE windows in the taskbar, and painfully locating the site she was just on.