Firefox Market Share

Looking at one view of the latest percentages on browser market share, it shows some very interesting things. While I’m not a statistics guy, the numbers do show a few things.

Internet Explorer holds the lead in total market share. But what is interesting is the way in Microsoft goes about doing that: the divide and conquer approach. Microsoft has 3 browsers in play with IE7, IE6, and IE5. IE 5 users are most likely holding out because that was the last active version of IE for Mac. People still seem stubborn to let go of IE6 because there are still more of those than IE7 users. Talk about a poor updating methodology!

What I really wanted to say was that Firefox has gobbled up 37% ( as of March 2008 ) of the market share. As you look back, the percentage has only been going up ever so slowly. While Firefox has been gaining ground, IE6 is slipping down to about 30%. It is my guess that Firefox and IE7 are vying for the IE6 defectors.

But now we are already talking about Internet Explorer 8!?!? No wonder the browsers are fighting for market share! If you count each verions of IE as it’s own browser (which isn’t far from the truth), then Firefox is the market leader.

Side note: Safari has slowly been gaining ground as well, but comes in at a measly 2.1%.

Since Firefox 3 is coming soon we can probably place bets that it’s market share will only continue to grow.