Since the summer 2004 news that Internet Explorer saw its first-ever drop in market share, keeping tabs on web browser market share has become a popular pastime for some. Since Firefox 1.0 was released in the fall of 2004, we've seen its market share inch upwards, breaking the 10 percent barrier last November. Apparently, it's doing even better in Europe.
According to the French-speaking portion of the Ars staff (Ken and Herschell), French web metrics firm XiTi says that on a recent weekend, a sample of 32.5 million web site visits showed that Firefox has passed the 20 percent market share figure in Europe. The percentage of Firefox users was highest in Linux creator Linus Torvalds' homeland of Finland, where usage hit 38.4 percent. Firefox is also popular in Slovenia (35.6 percent) and Germany (30.3 percent). In contrast, Ukraine, Belgium, and Denmark sit at the bottom with 9.5 percent, 10.2 percent, and 10.4 percent, respectively.
As good as those numbers are, they need to be taken with a grain of salt. XiTi performed its measurements on a weekend, which means it captured a disproportionate number of home users and comparatively few corporate desktops. Most large companies still use Internet Explorer, so using weekend surfing activities as a baseline for market share evaluations is going to miss out on a lot of IE use.
One conclusion that can be drawn from the figures is that home use of Firefox is growing. Whether it's due to Firefox features such as tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking or in response to fears about the security of Internet Explorer, people are giving Firefox a shot and many are sticking with it. By way of anecdotal data, I have been recommending Firefox to my Windows-using friends and family for over a year now. Almost everyone who has given it a try continues to use it today.
Will the coming of Internet Explorer 7 later this year turn the tide back in Microsoft's favor? IE7 will have a number of security-related enhancements and some new features to boot. However, some of those features will be old hat for those accustomed to Firefox. In addition, Microsoft is limiting availability of IE7 to users of Windows XP (and the upcoming Vista, of course). With something like half of all corporate desktops still using versions of Windows older than XP, uptake of IE7 is likely to be slower in the enterprise than on the home desktop.
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