Browser Wars: Who's Winning, Who's Losing

The study tabulated statistics for North American Web sites, excluding sexually explicit destinations, through January 31, 2005. Janco publishes its browser market share report on a semi-annual basis.

According to Rafael Ebron, a Mozilla spokesperson, Firefox's penetration into various sectors of the digerati, or early-adopting members of the Internet elite, is even more widespread.

"Among traffic leading news sites, we estimate that Firefox has an approximate penetration of 11 percent," Ebron said. "Throughout the blogger community, it's perhaps as high as 35 percent."

Other key findings and conclusions of the study include:

• Netscape and AOL have a combined browser market share of just over 5 percent, and that percentage is declining.
  
  
• IE's market share has declined in the last 12 months.
  
  
• Virus attacks have prompted many to use automatic update features to get the latest versions of IE and alternatives to IE.
  
  
• Users are staying current, downloading the latest versions of IE and Netscape.
  
  
• A significant number of users are looking to solutions other than Microsoft, a sign Firefox stands to gain even more market share.