Via our friends at ReadWriteWeb, Mozilla is reporting that for the first time ever Firefox has broken 20% market share worldwide according to Net Applications. Two out of the four weeks in the month of October, Net Applications put Firefox market share at 20% or more, which is the first time that has happened. Firefox should be solidly above the 20% threshold in the next quarterly report from Net Applications — they were at 19.48% last quarter, and have gained at least a percentage point each of the last four quarters.
On almost all browser usage reports, Firefox has been inching toward 20% market share over the past year. TheCounter.com has Firefox at 18% last quarter, as does ADTECH for their Q1 2008 report, for example.
Firefox actually does even better in some global market share reports. W3Counter’s global stats, a report from a company owned by longtime SitePoint forum member Dan Grossman, has reported Firefox at over 20% since May 2007, and over 30% the past three months. And French service XiTi Monitor reports Firefox usage steadily over 30% for the past half year.
Regardless of which stats you trust, the picture is rosy for Firefox. Unlike Safari and Opera usage — which has generally remained flat across all usage reports (though Net Applications shows some growth for Safari the past couple of years), Firefox has continued rapid growth since its debut four years ago. Among early adopters, that use is even higher. Power user targeted sites generally have a higher concentration of Firefox users.
SitePoint, for example, gets over 50% of our visits from users browsing with Firefox (3.03 being the most popular version). ReadWriteWeb reports 55%, and my Rails Forum site sees over 68% Firefox usage.
It will be interesting to see how Google’s new Chrome browser (our coverage) impacts Firefox’s growth. It’s really too early to tell, but so far it hasn’t seemed to impact the usage share growth of Firefox very much, despite early stats showing that it was taking users away from Firefox (likely just a novelty effect). Usage has stabilized at just over 3% for Chrome at SitePoint, and seems to be at anywhere from 0.25% to 1% worldwide depending on who you trust.
So congrats to Firefox for reaching the 20% threshold. Here’s to continued growth.
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Congrats to Mozilla. Now Microsoft should package Mozilla with Vista setup or may be there new windows 7. Its not Hitler world anymore. Now days are changed & world is going open. Microsoft should think about this – like Microsoft did with Online office.
Anyways cheers to Mozilla users ! Chrome is browser that Mozilla should watch for !
November 5th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Congratulations to Mozilla.
Keep up the good work and hope to see firefox far ahead of any other Browser. I too believe that Google’s new Chrome browser will be the biggest competitor in the near future. So its time for serious competition guys.
All the best.
Deependra Kanel
http://www.hostingzoom.com
November 5th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
IE 6 crept below 25% last month and is still dropping too! :D
November 5th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
From my October stats:
IE7: 52%
IE6: 19%
Firefox (all): 15%
Firefox 3.0.3: 9%
What’s vaguely irritating is that Chrome isn’t listed – even though there are separate listings for Sony, LG, Nokia and Samsung PDA/mobiles, Lynx, Epiphany, Camino and Dillo…
November 5th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Luckily, the last month saw 79% Firefox users on my blog and only 4.7% IE.
Having said that my blog is Rails related, so it makes sense that the visitors have more common sense than your average user.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Mozilla rules!
Microsoft must die!
Seriously, I’m against monopolization and really happy about Mozilla, though it;s worth it!
November 6th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Firefox is the best browser ever. Like simplicity and it’s very fast.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Firefox is the best browser now. But I feel google’s chrome is faster sometimes.
What do you guys think?
November 9th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Market share would be best reported from CNN.com, google.com, a bank. Market shares from websites talking about browser market share is always going to be higher on Firefox, because people with IE aren’t checking the market share.
CNN and Google get everyone from techies to non-techies so checking with those sites will give better numbers.
Most people don’t like change even though they voted a president for one. :) Using Firefox is different to them from what people around them use. Alot of people know it exists, but don’t understand browsers and just know the blue E gets them to the internet.
November 12th, 2008 at 2:49 am