Firefox Usage Climbing In Europe

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is reporting that, according to the most recent set of statistics from Web monitoring firm XiTi, Mozilla's most popular brower is now the browser of choice for one in five of Europe's surfers, at least at home. The fact that all the measurements were taken on a Sunday means that the figure isn't accurate for the whole market, though, since business PCs tend to have lower Firefox usage rates." From the article: "Other Web metrics companies produce more conservative estimates of Firefox' market share. In November, OneStat.com reported that Firefox had achieved a global market share of 11.5 percent, although it found that only 4.9 percent of people were using it in the UK."

Oh well...

There's a famous statistic on browser usage [w3schools.com] at w3schools.com, which is a decidedly pro-Microsoft site. They have Firefox at close to 25% in recent months, and they were quick to add a comment that this is probably not representative, because w3schools visitors are likely quite interested in the technology and likely to try out alternatives to the browser that comes installed with their operating system. Interesting, though, that most of those who do try it out seem to stick with it...

Re:Yeah, what is its share, anyway?

So, where are the hordes of IE fanboys...

I'd say, in the UK (where I am and where the article was saying Firefox was trailing behind) they are mainly in places were the user is forced to user a certain well-known browser (despite, maybe, preferring something better) due to slow organisations (or the slow IT departments thereof) who don't like change.

I'm, in particular, thinking of the public sector here (libraries, schools, universities, colleges, council and government offices) where MSIE is nearly always the only browser and the idea that one could do anything on the Internet not using MSIE and OE alone can be met with shock (even by the IT folks).

For instance my local library say they have a policy of not installing any software not from Microsoft for security reasons, and my local FE & HE college say the same. The director of IT at the college (where I'm glad to say I no longer go but I know people who still do and it hasn't changed) tells students who ask to use Firefox that it, I quote, "is a hacking [sic] tool like `Kuhzuh' [sic]" and makes it clear that running it off a USB dongle will get your account removed. From my experience and that of friends, universities tend to be more sympathetic to user choice but may be slow in getting around to actually installing Firefox across their networks (as in they've been meaning to install it since before 1.0 but haven't got around to it yet).

Although it is probably partly home users (esp. who use the WWW infrequently), most even totally computer-illiterate people who use the Internet any significant amount who I know seem to have converted on their own machines, so I see that is a much less significant problem.

Why Firefox isn't used much by businesses

I'd say, in the UK ... they are mainly in places were the user is forced to user a certain well-known browser ... due to slow organisations (or the slow IT departments thereof) who don't like change.

I don't think that's fair at all. I love Firefox, but using it at the office sucks. The senior developers love their security to such an extent that their browser is useless for using the intranet at work. At home, I can choose not to use sites with ActiveX or whatever, and frankly I've never found this a problem. At work, I have no choice, and it's a showstopper.

The problem attitude is exemplified by the mess that is CAPS, introduced in Firefox 1.5. We used to be able to set a single preference in about:config to stop Firefox blocking links to local files. Now you have to set a whole range of options, and the senior devs are deliberately not advertising the equivalent of the old option because for some reason they think this will help us. Their super-new, highly-configurable system apparently can't handle the single most obvious configuration -- allow unchecked access only to machines on my own network -- or if it can, the docs are so cryptic that a whole group of us who looked, all experienced Firefox users, couldn't work out how to do it in ten minutes without basically listing every machine explicitly in the CAPS entry.

In any case, the result is the same either way: a well known problem for many business users [mozillazine.org] remains inadequately addressed, Firefox developers continue to think they're doing the world a favour, and businesses continue to consider Firefox substandard regardless of its other merits. The solution is easy, but first the senior developers have to accept that they don't know their users' requirements better than their users.

Re:Oh well...

You must not be a developer. IE is incredibly limiting in what you can do with your site designs and is annoyingly poorly standardized. Not only does it not follow a real standard it doesn't set it's own standard either as major changes happen between different versions of IE and are never fully documented. The IE standard is mostly whatever people can figure out by fighting to make things work in IE. So long as you're using plain HTML and don't mind rather ugly pages it's not a big deal but if you want nice looking pages and advanced features Firefox and Safari are the only contenders.

Re:Oh well...

The 1.5 versions of Firefox and Thunderbird are self-updating. It seems to work pretty well so far. We'll see if there are issues the auto updates can't handle. Probably some bugs since it's a new feature but it's a really good idea I think. The apps and any installed extensions will be updated as needed unless you turn updates off.

I still think IE should just repackage Firefox as IE7. Easier, totally legal, and they can give users their expected look and feel with improved security, features, and standards support of FF. Seems a good idea to me at least.

Re:Uh, no.

w3schools is most definitly not pro microsoft. Wherever did you get a silly idea like that? It'd make more sense for them to be pro firefox anyway, hs just look at the css documentation on the site - most of the cool stuff is supported by firefox but not ie of any version.

Oh Boy..

Yet another useless statistic.

Europe?

Last I checked, Firefox useage is increasing everywhere, not just in europe... When something makes sense, it grows in use quickly.

Also, downloads don't count all the uses, I know in my work enviroment, we downloaded it once, but its on over 500 machines.

Re:Europe?

Yeah, but Europe is leading with a usage 20.11%

I wonder why the poster didn't link to the original study:
http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement13.asp [xitimonitor.com]

They also mention that they made the measurement on a monday too without a notable difference.

Re:Europe?

Mon dieux, how do I convert French percentages into English ones? And all those strange nations. What is this Autriche again, isn't that some Techno group?

Business usage

The fact that all the measurements were taken on a Sunday means that the figure isn't accurate for the whole market, though, since business PCs tend to have lower Firefox usage rates.

In the original French article, they do say that there is a little variation in Europe between the browser statistics on Sunday and those during the week, due to the tendency of businesses to be wary (of what they don't understand).

Look at the chart at the bottom of this page:
http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement12.asp [xitimonitor.com]

The variation is notable but not very much.

Re:Business usage

Actually, I find the variation to be very encouraging. Winning the home users is a powerful accomplishment. The past history of the PC has been that what people use at work is what they end up using at home due to familiarity. If people are increasingly using Firefox at home in spite of being forced to use IE at work (as is the case with many jobs) then Firefox is in fact doing better than work time statistics would suggest.

On the other hand, it could be that the difference is not between work and home but between the kind of people who would web surf on Sunday instead of going to church or visiting family.

What really matters ...

... is not the precise market share, but that the market share is big enough so that sites can't afford to be IE-only any more. I really don't care if the market share of Firefox (and other Mozilla browsers) is 10%, 25%, or even 50% -- what I care about is that the sites I need to go to are standards-compliant and don't rely on crap like ActiveX. Ideally, I'd like to see several major browsers, using several different rendering engines, and a host of minor ones, none having more than 50%, all rendering sites that conform to W3C standards reasonably well, all competing with each other. Doesn't seem like too much to ask.

FF Usage On My Site Is High

Having checked my website over the last few months, I was surprised at the statistics. Firefox has 56.15%, IE 17.48%, Mozilla 7.35% and the rest was Safari, Opera and even a few Netscape users! FF has done an incredible job thus far and I hope they continue to produce a great product. What has browser usage been like on your site?

http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

Wow, 4.9%

> although it found that only 4.9 percent of people were using it in the UK

Fascinating. I never used firefox in the UK and I wouldn't have guessed that 4.9% of firefox' users did.

Sorry.

I'm progressively switching to konqueror ...

... since Firefox 1.5. Really, like Linus said [slashdot.org], I can't stand Gnome 2.10 integration.

Konqueror is becoming better and better, and is really an alternative to firefox now

Firefox User statistics

I work for a company (A Canadian credit union) as a web-master.
While a more technologically-focussed person will likely use FireFox over Internet Explorer, I can give out with reasonable certainty, statistics that encompass a large sample size of people who fall across a broad spectrum of computer skill. Anyone with a bank account and the internet has likely at one time or another logged on to their bank to check out balances, pay bills, etc.

Looking at the statistics returned, I find:
90.89% use IE in all it's iterations
(97.81% of that use IE6, less than 1% per each preceding version)
6.82% use a version of Mozilla
(35.2% of that use 1.8, 29.48% use 1.7.12, 11% use 1.7.5)
1.26% use Safari.

We try to make sure that all customers have the ability to log in (It's kind of important)

Here's the actual article

Percentages all over Europe [xitimonitor.com] (in french, but the pretty pictures speak for themselves).

Not in itself all that meaningful, perhaps (other than that the average has now reached over 20% for Europe worldwide), but when you see the changes through previous editions:

1. current [xitimonitor.com]
2. 12 [xitimonitor.com]
3. 11 [xitimonitor.com]
4. 10 [xitimonitor.com]
5. 8 [xitimonitor.com]
6. 7 [xitimonitor.com]
7. 6 [xitimonitor.com]

...you get a pretty decent idea of the growth. (Anyone want to turn that into an animated gif?)

For the record, here's their map of the world [xitimonitor.com], showing ~15.88% in the USA, and 18.60% in Australia. And finally, the difference between percentages during the weekend and during the week appears to be 0.05% [xitimonitor.com] (if I interpret that graph correctly)

Dell Shipping Firefox now ...

Took delivery at ork of 3 Dell small business PC things - They all had Firefox pre-installed which surprised me. It was an older version, but even so quite nice to see for a change.

The EU should be investing here

This reminds me from yesterday's news.

Rather than the EU wasting resources on a Google clone, I'd rather see them investing in a browser (preferably FF, but any proprietary standards-compliant one works just as well). Of course with that line of thinking, I would hope they could also invest in Linux. If they're so afraid of an American company taking over the world and abusing its monopoly, they should start by helping its top, non-corporate-US, competitors.

The fact that all the measurements were...

The fact that all the measurements were taken on a Sunday...

...ALSO means that a significant percentage of the churchgoing population (who, in turn, are a significant percentage of the population at large) are not included in the results. Churchgoing folks are generally conservative, and thus more likely to use more typically corporate/conservative software (thus IE).

Probably won't alter the results much, but I'm sure it impacts them some.

Yey, go Finland!

38,4% Firefox users.

60% fewer statisticians proficient in language

In November, OneStat.com reported that Firefox had achieved a global market share of 11.5 percent, although it found that only 4.9 percent of people were using it in the UK.

A. 4.9 percent of all people use Firefox in the UK?
B. 4.9 percent of all Firefox users use it within the UK?
C. 4.9 percent of all people residing in UK use Firefox?
D. 4.9 percent of all internet users use Firefox in the UK?
E. 4.9 percent of all internet users in the UK use Firefox?
F. 4.9 percent of all Sunday morning internet users in UK use Firefox?
G. All of the above?
H. None of the above?

The reason companies don't use Firefox

The reason so many companies use Internet Explorer is because Microsoft makes deals with them that forbid the use of any third-party software on the companies' networks. This was the case at my former company.

Stats from MagPortal

For what it's worth, here are the statistics for MagPortal.com [magportal.com] (excluding search engine spiders and other browsers) for December 2005 compared to December 2004:
MSIE 6.0: 81.35% (down from 83.39% in Dec 2004)
Mozilla/5.0: 15.17% (up from 8.82% in Dec 2004)
MSIE 5.0 + 5.01 + 5.5: 2.75% (down from 7.22% in Dec 2004)
Mozilla/4.0: 0.75% (up from 0.56% in Dec 2004)

My own stats

I have two different sites that I use Google Analytics to track traffic on. They target very different people and the results returned are very different.

Site #1 is WiTendoFi.com [witendofi.com]
It is a gaming site about finding other Nintendo players online.
1) Firefox 75%
2) IE 16%
3) The rest :)

Site #2 is CSpost.com [cspost.com] (I work for them)
It is a web based store for a lot of housewares and such.
1) IE 75%
2) Firefox 11%
3) The rest :)

The difference is of course huge, but that 11% is up from around 7-8% last year...

In related news

It is reported that 99.3% of firefox users use firefox! OMGLOLBBQ!

Security by obscurity?

One of the reasons used to pimp firefox was that as the majority of people use IE, nasty people focus their nastyness towards the flaws in IE. Now it would obviously be ignorant to say there are *NO* holes in the security of the fox. Will the recent migration of users to firefox cause attacks to be aimed at it rather than IE? I did switch to firefox - mainly because I have witnessed IE die on a good few computers, and I like tabbed browsing, and the mouse gesture plugin. And although I dont know if I'm any more secure, it's not a huge issue - Hell I spend most of my time on unsecured wireless networks.

Still a little way to go

The firefox team has done a great job but there are still many glitches that are a pain at times:

- You have to partly disable video acceleration for some types of content to play properly in some pages.
- Huge memory usage. Memory leaks in some situations but I can't put my finger on what is causing it. (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5)
- Java plugins frequently cause problems.
- Random download manager crashes (Usually with many concurrent downloads, some of them stalled).

Plus some little irks like the fact that if a live bookmark goes down, firefox doesn't notify you and keeps displaying the old stories indefinitely.

It's great software, but it still has a little way to go before it's perfect.

Curious about Opera stats

It's well known that Opera has a much higher usage share in Europe than in other parts of the world. I've seen the map [xitimonitor.com] showing Firefox usage per country, but I'd like to see what the IE, Opera, and Safari figures are as well. Maybe a map that turns each country into a pie chart with the top four?

Firefox is unstable.

Firefox is the most unstable program [mozillazine.org] commonly used with Windows.

Firefox sucks compared to mozilla

I hate the way they have dumbed down the UI to make it more appealing to the mass market. I sure hope the seamonkey project works out.

I Love You Foxy Firefox

Hi Foxy FireFox, I Hope U Live Forever, because you are my little FireFox! And you are the greatest, And you are the spirit of a new beginning Like nothing ever happened, we can start all over again May the dark path of incompetence forever be in the shadow of my dear little FireFox!

Asshole webmasters for Firefox!!!

As a webmaster, if someone has a problem with my site(s), I tell them to switch to Firefox. Then I ask them if they still get ice from a vendor for an icebox, or if they prefer the wonders of electrified refrigeration. Just me being a prick like that I'm sure has changed a couple of people over.

I'm tired of being "nice" to IE users. Call a retard a retard, and maybe they'll want to change, or maybe they'll get all huffy and leave. Either way, eventually nobody is gonna use the icebox and vendor anymore.

rhY

Re:Bravo

Nah, we're all using Konqueror...

Re:Support for scripting languages

That is such FUD! To analyze any two languages, you have to take into account the various situations in which it might be used. Is a hammer better than a wrench? Depends on whether you want to drive a nail or turn a bolt. That being said, Python is better than Ruby in every real world circumstance I have ever seen. I can write programs faster in Python with less code, and they're more secure too. I have never once seen a program written in Ruby that was better/easier to write than in Python. Python has bigger libraries and a better user community than Ruby. Plus there's a larger install base of Python interpreters.

Long story short, if you want to be fair and compare apples to apples, Ruby loses to Python.

Re:another BS stat?

> a sample that is likely skewed towards the geek crowd

I don't follow your logic. The geek "crowd" is too small to change the numbers, most of the geeks use firefox in work as well, and someone who works in front of the monitor all week, propably would not spent the day-off surfing.

>there wasn't much you could do on a Sunday commercially

A good reason to shop on-line then.

Re:Bravo

Nice flaming, but I just did an impromptu experiment, just to be fair.
FF 1.5, Opera 8.5, all extensions off.
Initially, Firefox 21MB RAM and Opera was 17MB RAM, both opening to a tab with Google.
I opened multiple tabs in each, same websites, alternating. Some flash (miniclip) some java (gmail) and some plain ol HTML. Throughout, memory usage was no more than 5MB apart, although I did notice Firefox using more CPU, most likely because I've increased maximum connections.
As for the load times, side by side they're nearly identical, each pulling ahead in a few instances.

Viral marketing probably does play its part, but I doubt that Firefox is "crap" and Opera is "much better."

Re:Support for scripting languages

This is the original news piece (french) which shows much larger statistics. http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement12.asp ?xtor=6/ [xitimonitor.com]

Well, the daweek doesen't seem to have an effect

Digging it up on a Sunday to me suggests that ...

Well, according to other news sites, they did a validation on the following monday, where the stats didn't change ...

Re:Meanwhile...

That would, of course, be South Korea. In North Korea they eat Firefox.