IE7 Bites the Dust! Firefox 2.0 Did It!

Both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0 were unveiled in October 2006. IE7 had the advantage of the ubiquitous Windows platform and the Windows Update infrastructure designed to automatically serve up updates to existing IE6 users. Mozilla's open source browser is less fortunate in this perspective, but it not only manages to keep up the pace with Internet Explorer 7, but is also in the position to bring Microsoft's latest browser down to a scratching halt. Since the October launch IE7 only grew to 33.55% of the market, according to information provided by Market Share by Net Applications.

Despite the fact that Microsoft pushed the browser as an update to IE6 to Windows XP users, and the inclusion of IE7 into Windows Vista, the browser failed to dislodge its predecessor from the dominant position on the market two months short of its one year anniversary. IE6 is still top dog on the browser market with 44.59%, but the percentage indicates a complete disinterest for security on behalf of the vast majority of Internet Explorer users, as they have still to update.

In almost the same period, Firefox 2.0 increased its market share to 12.98% and currently accounts for a superior adoption rate than that of IE7. In fact Firefox 2.0 jumped from 11.07% in June to 12.38% in July and to 12.98% in August. This translates to an increase of 1.9% in market share. In the same three months, Internet Explorer 7 only managed to move up from 32.02% to 33.15% and to 33.55%, meaning that in the past two months IE7 only jumped 1.53%. The adoption rate of Firefox 2.0 is clearly larger than that of IE7.

A signal that has to act as an alarm for Microsoft is the fact that IE6 dropped from 46.21% to 44.59% from June to August, which means that a small share of its users are in fact switching to Firefox instead of IE7. And there is no good news for the Redmond company as Mozilla and Apple are both getting ready to unveil fresh versions of their browsers by the end of the year. Apple plans to release Safari 3 in October and Mozilla will launch the open source Firefox 3.0 by the December.