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Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide

Posted by kdawson on from the press-the-advantage dept.

gQuigs notes a graph up at StatCounter Global Statistics, which shows that in the last few days Firefox 3.5 became the most used browser version worldwide, edging ahead of IE7. IE8 is rising fast (along with Windows 7), but over the last few months the slope of Firefox's worldwide curve has been steeper. (In the US, IE8 has always been ahead of Firefox 3.5; in Europe Firefox has led since late summer.) The submitter suggests using the time when Firefox rules the roost, globally speaking, to put the final nail in the coffin of IE6, which still has a 14% global share (5%-7% in the US and EU; China and Korea are holding up IE6's numbers).

8 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. StatCounter? by gzipped_tar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Considering most Firefox users are more tech savvy than average and many of them are likely to have already blocked StatCounter altogether, this is impressive.

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    1. Re:StatCounter? by dakameleon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Considering most Firefox users are more tech savvy than average and many of them are likely to have already blocked StatCounter altogether, this is impressive.

      Statcounter uses an image as a fallback for getting stats where the cookie is blocked or Javascript cannot be run, so unless you've blocked all third party images (how's the text web going for you, tinfoil hat man?) it still shows up.

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  2. IE6 comes with XP, IE8 with Win7 by AbRASiON · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're going to see IE8 be absolutely huge over the next 5 years - even if firefox is preferred by geeks and the somewhat tech savvy.
    As the huge 32/64bit transition begins (next 12 to 36 months my guess) business's finally can roll out 64bit Windows 7, avoiding Vista entirely and finally retiring Windows XP.
    This is going to continue to increase IE8 marketshare much like IE6's was boosted from XP, so what we can only hope is that IE8 isn't garbage (me, I don't know? I use Firefox also)

    For what it's worth, I work for one of the state govt's of Australia and one of our departments has just switched from Win2k to XP :/ so I'm guessing we won't be moving to Windows 7 for at least 2 years.

  3. Re:IE6? Really? by rrohbeck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I see "This site requires Internet Explorer 6" on our Intranet all the time. Peoplesoft for example, urgh.
    Of course, the site will run perfectly with Firefox if I change the user agent string.

    Corporate Intranets with lazy admins or dumb policies are what keeps IE6 alive.

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  4. Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... by quickOnTheUptake · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Total marketshare isn't the most interesting metric, the rate of change is. Right now FF 3.5 is gaining users faster than IE8. The question (which the graph doesn't readily answer) is whether the net FF adoption rate is faster than the net IE adoption rate. I.e, is the total number of FF users going up faster than the total number of IE users? Is FF3.5 going up fast just because FF3 users are upgrading more quickly than IE7 users?

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  5. Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... by Zerth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not to mention that IE8's growth seems to be exclusively at the expense of 6/7 so IE as a whole has declined greatly, or the market has grown while IE use has remained constant.

  6. Non uniform adoption across countries? by zlel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in Japan and adoption seems really conservative. Let's first take version numbers away to get a better view.
    Japan
    Firefox has been having a 21-23% share for the 2 years, with IE still leading though dropping from 70 to 65%
    Growth in conservative. UK seems to have a similar trend.

    Singapore
    About 30% share and growth is conservative.

    Malaysia
    Growth from 30% up to 40%, with an equal drop in IE share.
    This looks like a market where Firefox can overtake IE?

    France
    very interesting trend. W38 2008 and W26 2009 had a short period where IE use was displaced by Firefox, but IE use was resumed in a few weeks.
    Does that mean users in France are open to the idea, but still don't deem Firefox a good replacement yet?
    Interestingly Vietnam seems to have a similar trend.

    China
    IE has 95% share all the way, with a drop recently, giving way not to Firefox, but to Maxthon.

    Poland / Finland
    Firefox is the most popular browser!

    North Korea
    Nobody really wins. Only IE, once in a while.

    Antartica
    Go figure. But firefox seems to be winning?

    It would be nice if we could have a world map of the most popular browsers in each country
    so we can adjust our expectations when talking to overseas partners...

  7. Re:Why MS failed. by MemoryDragon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually IE8 might be soon the king of IEs even corporations now have a serious upgrade look.
    I expect that IE7 wont really have the impact IE6 had and frankly spoken IE8 while not being really that good is good enough for now.
    Still I applaud the rise of firefox, this will open enough pressure on M$ to finally support SVG and raise their ACID compliancy from 20% up to decent levels without lying that ACID tested unfinished standards (which it does not)