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Market adoption of Mozilla Firefox

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Since its initial release in 2004, market adoption of Mozilla Firefox has increased rapidly. Firefox is the second-most popular browser worldwide after Internet Explorer.


Usage share

Usage share of Mozilla Firefox over time
A graph of Firefox 1.x and 2.x cumulative downloads in millions
A graph of Firefox 1.x and 2.x download rate in thousands per day
See also: Usage share of web browsers

Web-surfers have adopted Firefox rapidly, despite the availability of Internet Explorer on almost all Microsoft Windows NT PCs. Internet Explorer has seen a steady decline of its usage share since Firefox's release. By early 2008, Firefox had around 15% global usage share of web browsers.[1][2] As of January 2008, according to NetApplications, Firefox 2 is the third-most popular browser version with 16% usage share after Internet Explorer 7 (43% usage share) and Internet Explorer 6 (32% usage share).[3] Safari 3.0 increased to 4% but both FF1.x and Internet Explorer 5 versions dropped to less than half a percent each.[4]

Firefox 2.0 usage grew from 0.69% in October 2006 to 11.07% in July 2007.[5]

Europe, according to a study released by the firm XiTi in January 2008, generally had higher percentages of Firefox use, with an average of 28%. The highest usage is in Finland (about 45% as of December 2007).[6]

Download count

Downloads have continued at an increasing rate since Firefox 1.0 was released in November 2004. No other Mozilla Foundation product has experienced such growth.[7]

Downloads of Firefox 1.x and 2.x since November 9, 2004
Date Number of days Downloads (millions)
November 10, 2004 1 1[8]
February 16, 2005 99 25[9]
April 29, 2005 171 50[10]
July 26, 2005 259 75[11]
October 19, 2005 344 100[12]
March 3, 2006 479 150[13]
July 31, 2006 629 200[14]
November 11, 2006 732 250[15]
February 12, 2007 825 300[16]
September 7, 2007 1032 400[17]
February 21, 2008 1199 500[18]

These numbers do not include downloads using software updates or from third-party websites. They do not represent a user count, as one download may be installed on many machines, or one person may download the software multiple times. According to Mozilla CEO John Lilly, Firefox had 160 million users as of March 2008.[19]

Industry adoption

Since the pre-1.0 stages, several well-known websites and web applications, including Gmail, have supported (and in some cases, required) the use of Firefox. Since March 30, 2005, the Google search engine has utilized the link prefetching feature of Firefox for faster searching. Google, Inc. also recommends Firefox as the browser for its Blogger.com weblog service.[20] On May 18, 2005, eBay announced support for Firefox for its eBay Picture Manager.[21] In 2006, Microsoft released a Firefox-compatible Windows Genuine Advantage browser plug-in.[22]

Search engine companies including Google, Yahoo! and A9.com now also offer Firefox extensions for accessing their services, in addition to their original Internet Explorer add-ons. Google has released four Extensions for Firefox,[23] further affirming the company's interest in Firefox.

In addition, some software packages, such as the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, are bundled with Firefox.

Institutional adoption

During the FOSDEM 2005 conference, Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, noted that Firefox has had more success in the consumer market than with institutions.[24] He also theorized that pressure from Microsoft caused institutions who had adopted Firefox to remain silent about it.

I know companies that are deploying Firefox or Thunderbird, but they aren't talking about it as they don't want to see an increase in their [Microsoft] Office licence price.

Some observers, such as Serdar Yegulalp of TechTarget[25] and Jim Rapooza of eWEEK[26] note that Firefox does not provide tools that make institutional deployment easier, such as a client customization kit (which Mozilla has since released[27]) or Microsoft Installer (MSI) packages. Yegulalp also notes that although Firefox does not natively support ActiveX plugins, which are sometimes used in institutional environments, third party bridges are available.

While institutions may not be actively deploying Firefox in large numbers, more and more are allowing their employees to install Firefox, according to JupiterResearch. They found that in 2006, 44% of companies with more than 200 employees allowed Firefox on their employees' systems, compared with 26% in 2005.[28]

References

  1. ^ "theCounter.com Browser Stats for January 2008". theCounter.com. 2008-02-01. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
  2. ^ "NetApplications Browser Market Share for January 2008". 2008-02-01. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
  3. ^ "NetApplications Browser Version Market Share for January 2008". 2008-02-01. Retrieved 2008-02-19.
  4. ^ "Market Share accessdate = 2008-02-20". NetApplications. {{cite web}}: Missing pipe in: |title= (help)
  5. ^ "IE6 vs. IE7 vs. Firefox 2.0 vs. Firefox 1.5 vs. Safari 3.0 vs. Opera 9 - In browser market share deathmatch". Softpedia. Retrieved 2008-02-19.
  6. ^ "Relaunch of Mozilla Firefox's visit share in the European countries at the end of 2007". XiTi.com. 2008-01-29. Retrieved 2008-02-18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Firefox and more: the graphs (part 1). Asa Dotzler's weblog.
  8. ^ 1,000,000+ downloads on day 1
  9. ^ firefox 25,000,000
  10. ^ celebrating 50 million firefox downloads
  11. ^ Firefox Exceeds 75 million Downloads
  12. ^ firefox hits one hundred million downloads
  13. ^ 150 million and counting!
  14. ^ Firefox 200 Million Downloads - what it means
  15. ^ 250000000 downloads!
  16. ^ Firefox: 300 million+ downloads
  17. ^ Four Hundred Million Firefox Downloads
  18. ^ 500+ Million Celebration
  19. ^ "Mozilla Execs on Firefox 3, iPhone and Ten Years of Growth". 2008-03-26. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  20. ^ Where can I upgrade my browser? Blogger Help.
  21. ^ eBay Picture Manager Enhancements. eBay.
  22. ^ "Genuine Microsoft Software" (HTML). Windows Genuine Advantage: Frequently Asked Questions. Microsoft Corporation. 2006. Retrieved 2006-11-06.
  23. ^ Google Firefox Extensions
  24. ^ Firefox sneaks into the enterprise. ZDNet UK.
  25. ^ Serdar Yegulalp. "How to switch an enterprise from IE to Firefox". TechTarget. Retrieved 2006-10-08.
  26. ^ Jim Rapooza. "Mozilla Firefox 1.0". eWEEK. Retrieved 2006-10-08.
  27. ^ "Firefox 1.5 CCK (Client Customization Kit) Wizard". Retrieved 2006-09-22.
  28. ^ J. Nicholas Hoover. "IE7 vs. Firefox 2.0: Why This Browser Battle Matters To Businesses". InformationWeek. Retrieved 2006-10-17.
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