By Ingrid Marson, 15 August 2005 17:20
NEWS Microsoft's Internet Explorer has clawed back some market share from Mozilla's Firefox, according to latest figures.
Web application provider NetApplications said on Friday the open source browser's market share fell from 8.71 per cent in June to 8.07 per cent in July. IE's share grew from 86.56 per cent to 87.2 over the same period. NetApplications said this is the first time Firefox has faltered in its rise against IE since its launch last year.
W3Schools.com, a web development tutorial site, has also recorded a drop in the proportion of its visitors using Firefox over recent months, from a peak of 21.0 per cent in May to 19.8 per cent in July. The combined market share of IE 5 and 6 increased from 71.4 per cent in April to 73.8 per cent in July.
Over the last year, Firefox's market share has increased significantly, with web analytics firm OneStat.com reporting it quadrupled its market share between May 2004 and April 2005, and WebSideStory reporting it doubled its user base in the US between June 2004 to April 2005.
The drop in Firefox's market share could be an anomaly, or it could indicate that some users have switched back to IE. Over the last couple of months, developers have patched a number of security flaws in the open source browser and in Greasemonkey, a third-party extension for it.
It is possible that these and earlier security flaws have damaged the open source browser's reputation, although there have also been several IE security flaws over this period, including a flaw in the way IE handles JPEGs and a bug that could allow arbitrary code execution.
Microsoft plans a number of security improvements in IE 7. But as this browser will not be available to users of Windows 2000, the Mozilla Foundation has predicted that it will see a surge of interest in Firefox once IE 7 is launched.
Ingrid Marson writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Ian Hathaway
As a tech with security responsibilities, I will never use IE again unless they turn it back into simple software and not a program that interacts with the system kernel. To use such a ticking time bomb is begging for system takeover.
2. Alex
I've been using Firefox for the last 6 months and I have been very disappointed with it and have switched back to IE.
I found Firefox unstable, even with all the patches and updates, when used for any period of time - espicially if a site has flash or real add-in. Firefox also consume a lot of system resources - more then IE.
The tabs is the only good point that Firefox has over IE (soon to be in IE7).
Firefox has done its job and given Microsoft a kick up the backside, Microsoft have responded and it's time to move back to IE!
3. Dave
As with Alex I have been using Firefox for 6 months or so. The tabbed browsing is a great feature but I keep having to resort to using IE as many sites still do not display or operate correctly in Firefox.
4. Ed Carroll
I have used Avant browser for over 2 years nearly - it sits over the top of IE but has so many great features - i.e. tabbed browsing since i first installed it (2 years ago!); the ability to click icons to turn of scripts, images, flash - anything you want actually... tried Firefox and didn't like it at all, stability, spee and resources were all below standard.
5. Jules
I like the way firefox prints (to printer) pages correctly (unlike ie) and shows more info about cookies, blocks popups and with two easy to add plugins shows non-compliant html (microsoft seem to have "extended" the standards here like they did with Java and many web developers think their additions are standard - firefox does display these non-standard additions, but the plug in warns you) and blocks adverts, which you can use to make webmail an altogether more pleasant experience for instance.
The only site I found it not to work with was smile.co.uk (and I expect that's their security checks), otherwise its been great - a breath of fresh air.
6. anonymous
I tried Firefox for a while, then switched to Netscape 8 which has both Firefox and IE. Very pleased with it.
7. lamchopz
I totally agree with Alex and Dave.
I used Firefox for merely 10 minutes and that's the end of it. When Maxthon came in, I knew it was the one.
I chose Maxthon over Avant since Maxthon has everything that Avant has, plus support for third-party download managers such as WellGet.
I'm waiting to switch to IE 7.
8. Tony Earnshaw
I've always been a Firefox sceptical, anyway. The thing is full of bugs and incomplete, for anyone using it. Though it has a few nice bells and tooters.
My Mozilla (Red Hat) 1.4 (updated, *this* Mozilla) is still the cat's whiskers and looks to be so, for a time to come.
--Tonni