By Jo Best, 28 February 2005 16:35
NEWS Firefox's progress against Internet Explorer is beginning to slow, new research has found.
Web analytics company WebSideStory has found that in the five weeks leading up to 18 February, Firefox's market share grew by 15 per cent, compared with the six weeks before, when the market share increased by 22 per cent.
The 15 per cent gain is modest in comparison to the open source browser's market share boom following the release of Firefox 1.0 in November, when the browser saw its market share leap by 34 per cent.
WebSideStory CEO Jeff Lunsford said in a research note that the slump was predictable but didn't necessarily mean Firefox won't meet its self-imposed target of 10 per cent market share by the end of the year.
"This is probably to be expected as we move beyond the early adopter segment. Back in December 2004, it seemed Firefox was a lock to reach 10 per cent by mid-2005, ahead of the reported year end goal of the Mozilla Foundation. Given the latest growth rates, the year-end target still appears attainable, but a mid-year achievement is unlikely unless we see increased marketing activity from the Mozilla Foundation," he said.
Firefox's market share currently stands at 5.7 per cent of all browser usage, according to WebSideStory, up from around three per cent in November 2004.
Comments
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1. anonymous
firefox boom not over...i think all these articles are being released so that people will be drawn away form firefox due to all the attention it has been getting and removing the attention from Explorer. FireFox will never die, it is far superior and safer than Explorer. I almost wonder if MS is planting these articles themselves.
2. anonymous
Why do supposedly mathematically sophisticated people insist on comparing apples to oranges? The 22% was over a 6-week period, while the 15% was over a 5-week period. If the rate of growth remains constant, then over a 6-week period the latest growth rate would be 18%, still less than 22%, but not by as much. And, a 34% growth compounded with a 22% growth and an 18% growth results in a total growth of 100%, which is a doubling of share.
3. It Man
it is MS planting the propaganda and the usual bunch of they are on their knees journalists.
no fireFox won't die I just did a massive installed on aver 500 machines and remove every sing of IE exlorer how can it die?
4. anonymous
I think firefox is simple and great. But it does not have dynamic font support which makes it impossible to read my language without IE. This could be one reason for lack of switch over to firefox.
5. xenixmacos
Fire fox is one of the best things to happen to the web-vironment, I've been a true microsoft supporter all these years, but the moment i used firefox, my loyalty wall underwent a slight dent, which has now turned into a decent breach, so much so, that i now advise all my buddies to go in for firefox. It's superb in every sense, and even tho' the boom seems to be slowing, i dont think it'll be forgotten.. because, its by word of mouth reports, and advertising, that products do catch up in market share, and I'm confident that everyone who's used Fireox has only good stuff to say about it.
6. anonymous
The whole article is extremely funny. Perhaps this is a parody article like the guy who was complaining he couldn't play defrag and anti-virus on mac mini (no need).
Any business/software program continually growing at 10%+ over a several month period is NORMALLY considered booming.
As market share gets higher, percent growth is less for same sort of booming... less market left to fight over and more people in each % of growth.
(Thinking about things, think this is just a clever ploy by silicon.com to sucker us into attracting people to an article due to curiosity and then shear silly power. They make money from the ads. Similar to how weekly world news sells papers...)
7. anonymous
This article misinterprets the data; the "boom" is not over. If you look at Asa's plot of downloads vs. time (http://photos3.flickr.com/3741817_2756078730_o.png), you'll see that the rate of firefox downloads has been roughly constant (resulting in a linear increase in downloads). This means that the % increase from one week to another will gradually decline, not as a result of the rate of downloads decreasing, but because the rate of downloads has remain fixed.
8. Mark
stupidest article ever. i expected at the end of the article to see "haha made you click, there was really no story. we just needed to put the word 'firefox' in headlines again =P"
9. David Naylor
WebSideStory is trying to cause a stir by claiming that adoption of Firefox is slowing down. They show that relative increase of Firefox usage was lower between January and February than between November and December. While this is true, it's rather misleading. For the relative growth rate to be constant Firefox would need to increase exponentially. The Firefox downloads are increasing in a close to linear fashion.
WebSideStory have now changed the numbers in their report. They now show the important figures. With a little number crunching, it's clear that Firefox has seen a constant adoption rate of 0.021 percentage points per day since the beginning of December.
10. IEFan
To respond to the questions being asked about why or how Firefox will die -
Its very simple. Let it pass the 10% figure and all the spyware and adware authors will get busy exploiting the holes in Firefox. When security problems couple with the rather restricted rich-media capabilities of Firefox everyone will lose interest and turn back to IE.
11. nigel bradshaw
This type of article about research for a newly launched product just makes me cringe. Firefox is not even officially 4 months old and the same IT press who were heralding it's launch as an IE killer are now heralding the voice of it's doom!.
12. David Fletcher
Has anybody included in the percentages the number of installations of Fedora Core and any other Linux distributions which include Firefox?
These are downloaded from the Linux distribution mirror sites, not the Firefox site, and therefore will probably not show up in the Firefox download statistics.
13. anonymous
Its too buggy. Lots of people will try it and then bin it - I did (despite the fact that it is a bit quicker than IE, and I did like the tabs.) I will wait for the next version when some of the more basic bugs are fixed.
14. anonymous
I am not enamoured of firefox one little bit. It really does not have the full capabilities of IE and is a pain when writing for it.
It may be people are downloading but are they continuing to use it?
15. Jamie Bishop
The number of downloads is irrelevent as the majority of Firefox users dump it for there preferred browser after a day or two.
That's not going to be a popular statement here but take a look at any busy websites logs and you will see rapid growth in the uptake of Firefox with almost the same rapid decline in it's use more recently.
The fact is this month there are far less Firefox users than last month and attacking this journalist because the story doesn't fit with your emotions won't change anything.
Anyone who thinks Firefox is more secure than IE lacks common sense and is putting themselves in a precarious situation.
16. anonymous
Why no critisim over the total stagnation of IE market share - Come on, it got to 95% and got no further. How slack of Microsoft not to bother to get the final 5% of the market!
17. anonymous
Firefox is my preferred browser - tabulated pages is the thing that does it for me regardless of apparent (short lived) security advantages.
Neverthess, I have to keep IE on my desktop for the still number of Firefox incompatible sites - whether this is lack of features or Microsoft's non-conformance to standards is irrelevant to the end user.
I was interested to read the IT manager who installed Firefox and removed IE. As his work colleague I would be peeved to say the least - in fact I would go on to say that this act would be seen at best draconian at worst old IT mentality.
I do hope that Firefox can keep up the presssure on IE, it is superior in many ways but it needs something for word of mouth to make it to the average user and therefore worthwhile for web sites to support it. As a test, ask your nextdoor neighbour if he's heard of it.
18. anonymous
IEFan misses one of the main benefits of Open Source software. If there were major security holes then they would be more open about them (no pun intended) and they would be fixed quicker.
Hopefully the larger the userbase of FireFox the more people get involved and bug testing etc. speeds up.
Anyway FireFox isn't even at version 1.2 yet and IE is at version 6. Any 'missing' features will apear or someone will write a plugin for them.
Also if M$ didn't bundle and inter-twine IE with Windows would people down load it as their first choice browser?
19. Lever
So What? The initial "boom" may be over but the rise continues.
I'd rather have a standards-compliant browser that renders my well-written code correctly rather than some clunky heap of junk like IE.
I bet Microsoft will rebuild IE from the ground up, add some features and make it standards-compliant too, then it will have earned its market share... did I mention that I reckon they'll just copy what Mozilla have done, like they copy and assimilate everything else - windows OS, firewalls, compression tools...
Until then FireFox IS superior and the Thunderbird email client has some good advantages too.
20. Hid S
What's the point of the article?
IE comes with windows which comes with every PC that 90% of the people buy.
Go to your average guy in the street with a PC and ask him if he knows what Firefox is.. and he'll say it's a slightly dodgy but exciting film with Clint Eastwood in it.
Again, this is another article where the 'fact' is not based in reality.
The reality being that people don't care if Firefox is better than IE or not. (btw, none of you people posting here count as 'normal people' haha.. the mere fact that u subscribe to silicon.com means u are in a small percentage of computer users.)
21. David Fletcher
To the Anonymous UK Publisher who needs to use "Firefox Incompatible" web sites:-
If these behave in the same fashion as the one I've come across, in that they simply refuse to talk to a browser other than IE, Anonymous UK Publisher should start up Firefox, click Tools... Extensions and then Get More Extensions. Search for and install User Agent Switcher, which then appears under the Tools menu and allows Firefox to tell porky pies about it's identity.
I use Firefox with Fedora Linux to log into the National Lottery web site, which then thinks it's talking to a PC running IE on XP.
Of course, web sites like this really should review their policies when deciding which web browsers are "incompatible"...
22. Rob
I downloaded firefox and tried it out, it's ok, reminds me a lot of Netscape, didn't really like that much.
Open source maybe good but it's percieved as a techie thing, you need ease of use and the advantage of IE over Firefox is corporate backing, not only does that bring the obvious advantages of a financial base and such like but also reinforces the perception to the mass market of joe public that IE is a safer option to go with, especially with things like Automatic Updates.
23. Adey Gibbs
Ever since I installed Firefox back in November of 2004, I haven't looked back, and I agree with the last message here, that all of these articles are just designed to keep the whole sorry Microsoft story rolling along, same as ever. If Mr.Gates & Co had done their job properly to be begin with, wouldn't we all simply dismiss the these Alternative browsers as soon as they appear? ..I say THANK YOU MOZILLA!! ..And what with the Linux community gaining ground all the time as well..,
- Micorosft?? , the coffee is smelling better and better each day!!
24. anonymous
If it would stop crashing I would use it.
25. anonymous
Silicon.com is found guilty of building up, tearing down and generally acting like a low grade tabloid when it comes to the Firefox browser story.
Stop it, I expect better from you!
If it can't promote itself off it's own back with REAL stories success or otherwise then stop reporting on it and trying to hype it up!
26. anonymous
You may be particially correct in saying there will be inevitable holes in Firefox and with increasing market share so will come the exploiters ... HOWEVER, there are some substantial points in Firefox's favor that would imply its staying power - even if the fight heats up:
1) IE doesn't have users goodwill in this David vs Goliath battle - does anyone out there actually trust MS? - nope!
2) Firefox does NOT use ActiveX! Thank goodness for that!
3) Anyone ever tried to get rid of IE's index.dat file will never want to use IE again :D
4) IE's hooks into the OS make it more profoundly vulnerable than Firefox.
5) MSfot will have to tread softly on any attempts to squash Firefox, at least any honest attempts in the publics perception, as European regulators (I'd say US regulators have given the wink and nod to MSfot to do what it wills), are keeping a close eye on the giants movements.
As the MS monolopy's true colors show, more and more users are looking for ways to tell MSoft that they may own the mainstream OS, but not every dang other item on it!
The only real concern I have for Forefox's longevity is, judging by Msoft's record, that they have a big bag of dirty tricks just waiting to spice up the pot ! You can bet their PR guys are busy working on this 'issue' as we type!