Firefox grabs more IE marketshare

MOZILLA’S open source browser Firefox has taken another big chunk of marketshare from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, according to the latest report from French research group XiTiMonitor.

The report says Firefox’ share of the Europe market climbed 5 per cent in the 12 months to December, giving it 28 per cent of the overall browser market.

In Oceania, which includes Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, Firefox performance is even stronger, claiming 31.1 per cent of the browser market – up from 29.7 per cent in November.

By region, internet users in Oceania are more likely to use Firefox than any other region. The 31.1 per cent Firefox market share in Oceania compared to the Mozilla browser’s 21 per cent in North America, 20.2 per cent in South America and 16.5 per cent in Asia.

For a single country market, Finland leads the world in Firefox users, with more than 45 per cent of the market.

Firefox’ growth in market share has come at the expense of Internet Explorer – which is still the commanding market leader at 66.9 per cent.

More interesting is the successful upgrade conversion rate of Firefox compared to Internet Explorer. Less than half of Internet Explorer site visits are performed with the latest version of the browser, while 93 per cent of all Firefox visits are done with Firefox 2, the latest version.

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Google, utterly dominant, still growing

SEARCH giant Google not only completely dominates the global search market – commanding nine out of ten searches – but is still growing its market share, according to online metrics specialist XitiMonitor.

According to XitiMonitor' monthly search barometer, Google accounted for 89.53 per cent of all search-generated visits in June 2007, up from 89.33 per cent (up 0.21 per cent) from May.

And Google's market share had grown by 3.7 per cent compared to the year-ago search barometer in June 2006.

The four other principal search engines have all seen their market share decline.
Number Two search engine has been the biggest loser in the past year, losing 1.25 percentage points to 3.21 per cent of the market.

Microsoft search fell year on year, but is the only other Top Five search engines to grow its market share between May and June. Microsoft commands 2.3 per cent of the market.

Other Top Five search engines were Orange and Free.

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Surging Firefox growth challenges IE

OPEN Source browser Firefox usage has continued to surge globally, jumping more than 17 per cent in Australia/New Zealand, and more than 15 per cent in Europe.

New research from internet monitoring firm XitiMonitor demonstrates Firefox is now entrenched as a mainstream browser, taking a market share of close to 30 per cent in Europe and Oceania, and more than 15 per cent in South America.

XitiMonitor found that Oceania, the region made up of Australia/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, was Firefox' fastest growing region.

XitiMonitor found Firefox was used by 28.9 per cent of Oceania internet users in the July survey, compared to 24.8 per cent of users its March survey.

Firefox growth in Europe jumped to 27.8 per cent in July from 24.1 per cent in March, while North America continued its strong momentum in Firefox take-up, growing to 18 per cent in July market share from 15.1 per cent in March.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is still the clear browser market leader, but continues to lose ground to the open source competitor. In Europe, Xiti found IE market share dropped from 73.3 per cent in to 66.5 per cent in the year from July 2006 to July 2007.

The Opera browser, also an open source system, is the third placed browser with 3.5 per cent, far behind second-placed Firefox.

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