Firefox Market Share Gains Continue
Mozilla's Firefox browswer has doubled its share since January.
Market share for Internet browsers is continuing to migrate to Firefox, the open source solution developed by Mozilla, doubling in users between January and April.
“Looking at the statistics in the data, it is really striking to see how quickly Firefox is taking hold in the marketplace,” Janco CEO, Victor Janulaitis told ClickZ. Janco reported findings from their study of Web browser market share on their IT Productivity Web site.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates with an 83.7 percent share in April, down 1.78 percent in the three month time period. Firefox more than doubled its reach, hitting the number two spot with a 10.28 percent share of the market, up 6.05 percent from January’s measurement of 4.23 percent. Interest in browsers implementing automatic updates to get the latest browser versions and avoid attacks on browsers is speculated to be fueling the Firefox growth.
“One of the problems is that Microsoft has been asleep at the switch,” explains Janulaitis, giving a reason why there may be room for Firefox to grab a larger stake in the browser space, “they have not had advancements in their technology.”
| Browser Ranking and Market Share Results from the Browser Market Share Study as of April 26, 2005 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 2005 | January 2005 | Net Change | ||||
| Browser | Rank | Percent | Rank | Percent | Rank | Percentage Points |
| Internet Explorer | 1 | 83.07 | 1 | 84.85 | -1.78 | |
| Firefox | 2 | 10.28 | 3 | 4.23 | 1 | 6.05 |
| Mozilla | 3 | 3.81 | 2 | 4.48 | -1 | -0.66 |
| Netscape | 4 | 0.92 | 4 | 3.03 | -2.11 | |
| AOL | 5 | 0.85 | 5 | 2.20 | -1.35 | |
| MSN | 6 | 0.67 | 6 | 0.58 | 0.09 | |
| Opera | 7 | 0.41 | 7 | 0.34 | 0.07 | |
| Total | 100.01 | 99.71 | 0.03 | |||
| Source: “Browser Market Share Study,” itproductivity.org, 2005 | ||||||
Developer Mozilla saw a slight dip in positioning of their Mozilla browser, knocking them from the number two spot to third. This could be due to loyal users updating their Mozilla browser with the company’s own Firefox software.
Still holding on to small segments of the market, Netscape and AOL experienced losses of 2.11 percent and 1.35 percent respectively, while MSN and Opera each saw marginal increases of less than one percent.
