Market adoption of Mozilla Firefox

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

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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. As of May 2008, according to NetApplications, Firefox had 18.41% worldwide usage share of web browsers, making it the second most-used browser, after Internet Explorer. [cite web | url = http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qpcal=1&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=112 | title = Browser Market Share | accessdate = 2008-06-01 | date = 2008-06-01 ]

Europe, according to a study released by the firm XiTi in March 2008, generally had higher percentages of Firefox use, with an average of 28.8%. The highest usage is in Finland (about 45.9% as of March 2008). [cite web | url=http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-us/browsers-barometer/firefox-december-2007/index-1-2-3-117.html | title=Relaunch of Mozilla Firefox’s visit share in the European countries at the end of 2007 | publisher=XiTi.com | date=2008-01-29 | accessdate=2008-02-18]

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. [http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007383.html Firefox and more: the graphs (part 1)] . "Asa Dotzler's weblog".]

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, Firefox had about 180 million users as of May 2008. [cite web | url = http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-entry/Sciam-Observations/Latest-Version-Firefox-Web-Browser/580000992& | title = The latest version of the Firefox Web browser: Fast and secure | publisher = Scientific American | author = Larry Greenemeier | accessdate = 2008-06-01 | date = 2008-05-27 ]

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. [http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=929 Where can I upgrade my browser?] "Blogger Help".] On May 18, 2005, eBay announced support for Firefox for its eBay Picture Manager. [http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200505181716522.html eBay Picture Manager Enhancements] . "eBay".] In 2006, Microsoft released a Firefox-compatible Windows Genuine Advantage browser plug-in.Cite web|url=http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/downloads/faq.aspx#Question3Label|title=Genuine Microsoft Software|accessdate=2006-11-06|publisher=Microsoft Corporation|year=2006|work=Windows Genuine Advantage: Frequently Asked Questions|format=HTML]

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, [ [http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/index.html Google Firefox Extensions ] ] 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. [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39189585,00.htm Firefox sneaks into the enterprise] . "ZDNet UK".] He also theorized that pressure from Microsoft caused institutions who had adopted Firefox to remain silent about it.

Some observers, such as Serdar Yegulalp of TechTarget [cite web | url = http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1215319,00.html | title = How to switch an enterprise from IE to Firefox | work = TechTarget | author = Serdar Yegulalp | accessdate = 2006-10-08] and Jim Rapooza of eWEEK [cite web | url = http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1722434,00.asp | title = Mozilla Firefox 1.0 | author = Jim Rapooza | work = eWEEK | accessdate = 2006-10-08] note that Firefox does not provide tools that make institutional deployment easier, such as a client customization kit (which Mozilla has since released [cite web | url = http://www.mozilla.org/projects/cck/firefox/ | title = Firefox 1.5 CCK (Client Customization Kit) Wizard | accessdate = 2006-09-22] ) 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. [cite web | url = http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193302738&pgno=2&queryText= | title = IE7 vs. Firefox 2.0: Why This Browser Battle Matters To Businesses | author = J. Nicholas Hoover | work = InformationWeek | accessdate = 2006-10-17]

References