Chrome More Popular than Firefox in South America, Firefox Close to No. 1 in Africa

The browser market is changing, but, globally, things move pretty slow. Internet Explorer is king, although it's been losing market share for years, Firefox comes in second and Chrome in third place.

But if you look at some local markets, even at the continent level, things are more interesting as Pingdom has pointed out.

For example, Google Chrome is a lot more popular than Firefox in South America and is gunning for Internet Explorer. The latest numbers, for July, show that Chrome has 32 percent of the market, while Firefox 24 percent.

In August, Chrome has reached 33 percent and Firefox dropped to 23.5 percent.

Internet Explorer enjoys the lead with 42 percent market share, but it's dropping fast. This while Chrome is shooting up, it passed by Firefox last April and already has put an almost 10 percent points gap between them.

The reason why Chrome has caught on so well in South America is anyone's guess, but in several countries, Chile, Uruguay, Columbia, Argentina and Paraguay, Chrome is already the top dog, overtaking IE.

Elsewhere in the world, Firefox is the one breathing down IE's neck. In fact, in some regions, the two browsers are pretty close, though Firefox doesn't overtake IE in any of the continents, at the moment.

It comes the closest in Africa and Europe, where the two are neck and neck. There's just 1 percent point between them in Europe and about 0.5 percent points in Africa.

Interestingly enough though, while Firefox has been growing for the past year in Africa, so has Chrome, and both browsers are taking users away from IE at roughly the same rate.

Things are different in Europe. Firefox held the lead in Europe, as the number one browser, since December 2010, but was overtaken again by IE in June. Both browsers are losing users though, while Google Chrome is gobbling them up.