14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox has come a long way since its launch in 2004 but, on the whole, Internet Explorer still dominates the landscape, though its lead is diminishing. When it comes to the market share of individual browser versions, Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is now the most popular browser in the world, according to web analytics firm StatCounter with a 21.9 percent market share for the December 14 to 20 week.
Firefox 3.5 manages to edge out Internet Explorer 7 and the rising Internet Explorer 8, which now have a 21.2 percent and 20.3 percent market share, respectively. This is the first time in more than a decade that any one browser has managed to beat Internet Explorer in market share, but don't get too excited yet, this is the result of some favorable circumstances and not Firefox beating IE heads on, though the open-source browser's accomplishments can't be dismissed.
The reason why Firefox 3.5 has managed to uptake any IE version has to do with the release dates of IE 8 and to a lesser degree of Firefox itself. Microsoft's latest browser is slowly building up market share at the expense of IE 7 as Windows 7 picks up Steam and Vista and XP users update their browsers.
On the whole though, when all versions are added up, Internet Explorer still dominates without too much to worry about. Firefox 3.0 is at about 9.4 percent market share and Firefox 2.0 still has 1 percent, so Firefox adds up to 32.3 percent, a respectable number but way below IE's. With Internet Explorer 6 still commanding 13.9 percent, IE has 55.4 percent of the market.
Broken down by regions, IE 8 is already ahead in the US, but Firefox 3.5 comes in at second place. In Europe though, Firefox 3.5 has a respectable lead, not that surprising as Mozilla's browsers have proved a lot more popular in Europe than in other parts of the world and Firefox is actually the most popular browser in Germany at the moment.