Firefox gets a fifth of European market

The Mozilla Firefox browser has achieved a market share of more than 20 percent in Europe, according to the latest figures released by French Web metrics firm XiTi.

XiTi, which based its figures on a sample of 32.5 million Web site visits that took place on Jan. 8, said Finland has the highest proportion of Firefox users, followed by Slovenia and Germany. It found that the open-source browser is used by 38, 36 and 30 percent of users in these countries, respectively.

The United Kingdom has one of the lowest proportions of Firefox users in Europe, accounting for only 11 percent of Web site visits there. The 20-percent overall figure for Europe is an average calculated from the figures obtained for each European country, according to XiTi.

But XiTi's figures should probably be taken with a grain of salt, as Firefox usage tends to be highest over the weekend, according to Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe.

"We should emphasize that these measures have been done on a Sunday, when Firefox's usage peaks. The Firefox browser is less used during the week, as enterprises are more conservative when it comes to using a newer browser," Nitot said in a blog posting that commented on figures released earlier by the Web metrics company.

Other Web metrics companies produce more conservative estimates of Firefox's market share. In November, OneStat.com reported that Firefox had achieved a global market share of 11.5 percent, though it found that only 4.9 percent of people were using it in the U.K.

Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[Dead Soulman]

Firefox is great

I still don't understand why people don't venture out into trying different browsers. Most of the world is fixated into thinking that Explorer is the only choice out there. When in fact, Explorer is the one with the most vulnerabilities.

I love Firefox for many reasons, including cosmetics. Every time I get within reach of someone's computer, I introduce them to Firefox.

[just_some_guy]

The browser is unimportant

<I still don't understand why people don't venture out into trying different browsers.>

It's because most people don't care. People want to access websites, and the browser is just the tool to get there.

Most people that need to hit a nail will use whatever hammer is at hand - only the tool freaks will pause to consider the manufacturer of the hammer. The same goes for the browser - only the techno freaks even care who makes it.

There's no fixation on Internet Explorer. It's just there.

Different Browsers

"I still don't understand why people don't venture out into trying different browsers. "

Who says they dont? Had you ever considered that people do try different browsers and end up choosing IE? FF is ok, but to me it's a false god - it simply doesnt live up to all the hype it recieves from those who have jumped on the ABM bandwagon.

[JuggerNaut]

Firefox is GRRRREAT!

Definitely the best multi-platform web standards friendly fast
surfing web browser to date. Opera is making headway though ;-)

[duke12aw]

:D

i have already installed firefox on about 30% of my school computers :D i hide IE and safari and people start using it, saying they like it, then download it for their pc or mac at home.

[djemerson]

Point Being?

What exactly do you gain from this activity?

[pcabellor]

No grain of salt

The XiTi report also looks at the gap between work and home (weekdays and weekend) which has almost disappeared from their January 9 (monday) data.

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement13.asp" target="_newWindow">http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement13.asp</a>

[MarylinMonroe]

All of this is so bogus...

So I'm the only human who understands that all these numbers are nonsense? That no company, organisation or government on the planet has the slightest clue what brower I'm using right now? CANNOT have a clue because I've changed the identity string it emits?

In case this is really news to anybody, many websites are still written by morons who think IE is the bees knees. And who will tell me that my browser is "not supported" when I go there. And so I tell my browser to *lie* and pretend to be IE because then things work just fine. And the web-server at the other end logs another IE user, vastly over-inflating the numbers for IE users.

All this is trivial and obvious.

[mwa423]

Most people don't do this

Most people don't change their identity string. This is also in statistics why something called a margin of error exists.

[AgeOfPenguins_com]

Ok -- I'm game -- how do I fix my sites?

I am the web developer for a major website, which has various display problems in Firefox. I took the problem to a Firefox message board, and someone there reduced the problem to a simple test case, and concluded that there was a rendering problem in Firefox.

I was following all the HTML standards -- not writing sloppy code, not using plug-ins, etc. My site is completely kosher -- but Firefox does a messed-up job of rendering it.

Are there websites out there to help us web developers "take the plunge" and make the sites look better in Firefox?

I am only referring to rendering issues -- shame on those using Flash, etc. -- I also am against such proprietary technologies. I love using Javascript, CSS, DHTML -- but I must say, I love IE's ability to disable keystrokes, capture the scroll wheel, etc. which Firefox doesn't allow. You can't make desktop-like web apps that way.

I like IE for the same reason most developers like Windows -- it's a huge installed base, which prevents costly testing on 10 different platforms to have access to a given number of users.

Matthew

Interesting

20% is a big number!
I think if it is 20% in Europe it could rise higher in Asia and other continents.
Good for FireFox, bad for Microsoft. As for as I can see from Window Live, Microsoft seem to show quite a little acceptance for FireFox.
However world seem to show more!