Firefox Nears 30% of Worldwide Market Share

From: Tom's Hardware

12:10 PM - April 2, 2010

Mozilla this week released its first ever quarterly analyst report and according to Mozilla, Firefox is accounting for nearly 40 percent of the browser market share in Europe and nearly 30 percent worldwide.

Mozilla's numbers are a combination of market share numbers from StatCounter, Quantcast, Net Applications, and Gemius. For each continent, the company calculated an average of the figures reported by these sources and used this figure as the percentage. Mozilla says the number of Firefox users noted in parentheses for each continent is an estimate based on its own metrics.

Zoom

Market share aside, Mozilla also provided some interesting data about its users in the United States. By looking at the distribution of daily Firefox “update” pings from users, the company took a week’s worth of data and broke it down by hour and then by state to see which states are more likely to start up Firefox at any given time. From the looks of things, people in New York appear least likely to start up their browser during the 6 a.m., 7 a.m., and 8 a.m. hours. People in Hawaii appear to be most likely to start using their browser during the 6 a.m., 7 a.m., and 8 a.m. hours.
Zoom

If you're looking for an East Coast vs. West Coast comparison, it looks a little something like this.
Zoom

The study contains a bunch of other interesting bits and pieces, like how many tabs the average user has open (average of 2 and 3 but one user had 600 open at once) and which country in the world is more into add-ons and personalizing their browsers.

Download the report here.


SOURCE

Very interesting - if I had to take a guess, I would have thought FireFox usage would have been close to 10% (most non-tech people I know use IE). However, I know many corporations and universities which make FF the default choice, which may have a larger effect.

I've got all of the major browsers on my PC, but I use IE8 the most at the moment for general browsing. Any development work and I'll use FF, because the plugin feature is second to none.

Do some investigation on malware from the internet browsers and Browser speed.
You will dump IE in a heartbeat, which most high tech users have already done.

Symantec misguided a lot of people saying IE was "more secure" because it had fewer vulnerabilities, too bad they did not mention the number of problems per user and the severity of the problems.

Any one else wondering just how much information browser makers have on us?

Somehow those figures don't impress me. I use FF only for some sites and mostly use IE 8 because FF is still SLOWWWWWWWWWWW

Firefox v3.6.3 is very fast, at least for me. As fast as Opera v10.51 and faster than IE8.

FF 3.6.3 is the fastest browser on the market, there's no second guessing that. Opera tries hard, but their interface, "Ask" search engine, those weird speed dials and other gimmicks makes them an unattractive option.

They can keep FF for me. I just cannot see how any browser can be faster that IE8 is on my computer. How can you get faster than instantaneous?

Browser speed depends on a few things (Operating System, Hardware Spec and Internet Connection, ... Some are still on Dial-up and that is very very slow

Browser speed tests:
http://lifehacker.com/5457242/browse...and-extensions

Most of us do not get "instant" response. When I open Chrome in the morning it loads DailyTech, Anandtech, CNN, TKASomething and my email. IE is noticeably slower opening this group than Firefox or Chrome.

It could well be that a cable connection helps give me such a good experience with IE8.