Browser Battles
FIREFOX BREAKS 10% MARKET SHARE
Net Applications, a provider of web-based applications that measure, monitor and market websites for Small to Medium Enterprises (SME), announced its monthly website browser usage statistics for March 2006.
March 2006 browser usage market share numbers provided by HitsLink show Firefox breaking through the 10% critical mass threshold. Firefox has breathed life into a market share battle that for many years had none. With a strong feature set, aggressive product development cycle, open source platform, and by offering the browser for free, Firefox has the strategy in place to maintain its growth.
Will Firefox threaten Microsoft Internet Explorer for the market lead? That is still a long way off, and depends on many factors. Firefox has gained 3.34% browser usage market share in the last year, while Microsoft IE has lost 3.89% market share in the same period. If both companies maintain their current trends, it would still take Firefox over 10 years to pass Microsoft.
That doesn’t account for the new release of IE expected this year, the possibility of the browsing experience moving in mass to portable devices where Opera Browser has the advantage, or any number of changes in the market place to come.
How will Microsoft respond? So far, with new product release delays. But, Microsoft is still in the dominant market leader position, and has the much easier task of defending an entrenched position rather than attacking one.
Net Applications’ ongoing survey of the favorite browser in use has shown some dramatic changes as well. They continually survey their market share site visitor base with the question: “Which browser is better?” The options of Netscape, Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera were provided to visitors in a random order for each survey taker. And, the survey says…
Firefox is overwhelmingly considered the best browser available on the market today. Their survey shows an ever increasing percentage of voters favor Firefox, now with over 61% of the voters choosing it.
Apple Safari and Opera Browser both had small gains in usage percentage for March as well. Apple climbed to 3.19% from 3.13% for the previous month. Opera’s gain was from 0.53% to 0.54% browser usage market share.
Data for this article was compiled from world wide traffic statistics from websites tracked by Hitslink.
Related links: internet, computers and internet, technology, browsers, browsers, firefox, mozilla, microsoft, internet explorer, opera, safari, apple
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I love Firefox and use it almost exclusively. But, it has one disadvantage. With MSIE, you can view the source codes and edit - but, you can’t do this with Firefox, and that’s the one thing I miss when I’m not using Internet Explorer.
I guess I traded Pop Ups in IE for no editing source codes in Firefox.
Hi Barbara. I have mixed feelings about Firefox myself. Amongst other things I love that it is open source, despite the fact that they are raking in millions and not being so “open” about it.
A fully loaded Firefox (with plugins) is one powerful browser. And it is especially great for webmasters. But one of the things that I don’t like is every time there’s an update half of my plugins no longer work and I have to upgrade them all over again (if they are available).
The other thing that I don’t like is it is so strict in standards that it shows every little HTML blemish there is. So it is not friendly with a less-than-professional website (or blog) unlike IE which is a more forgiving.
Truthfully (and I will probably be drawn and quartered by the mozilla crowd for admitting this) is that for every day use I prefer Maxthon which is a shell on top of IE.
Maxthon is amazing and it can do pretty much what a loaded Firefox can do (perhaps even more) right out of the box. But it also has a plethora of plugins that are available and is also free.
To each there own I say.