Firefox took large share off Internet Explorer in 2007

Stan Beer
Monday, 28 January 2008 19:48

Your IT - Home IT

The latest figures from French based Internet traffic analyst XiTiMonitor shows that the Mozilla's Firefox web browser has continued to take market share off Microsoft's Internet Explorer across the globe over the past year, with a significant spike in Firefox usage in December 2007.

Oceania, which includes Australia, New zealand and Papua New Guinea, is now the leading continent in Firefox use, with Firefox holding 31.1% marketshare, up from 29% in November. However, the far more populous Europe is not far behind with a signficant increase in Firefox share over the past 12 months. Firefox share across Europe averaged 28% in December 2007, significantly up from the 23.1% share the browser held in December 2006.

The figures show that Finland, is now the leading Firefox user with 45.1% share, while Firefox had a greater than 40% share in Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Germany led the Western European countries with 34.2% Firefox share, while France was below average with 25.8% Firefox usage and the UK was near the bottom of the list with 17.2% in December.

Figures of all browser usage across Europe shows that Internet Explorer had 66.1% share in December 2007, compared to 28% Firefox, 3.3% Opera and 2% Safari.

Another significant statistic is the high conversion rate of Firefox users to the latest version compared to Internet Explorer users. Firefox 2 was used by 93% of users compared while only 46% of Internet Explorer users used IE7.

Firefox is also making ground in both North and South America. According to the report, 21% of users in North America now use Firefox, while 20.2% use Firefox in South America.

While Internet Explorer continues to hold the dominant share on all continents the XitiMonitor figures show that Firefox made gains on all continents in December 2007.

The original XitiMonitor report in French can be found here. An English translation of the site can be obtained by visiting here.

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