Firefox Global Usage Grows (as IE’s shrinks)

In early July, OneStat.com, the Amsterdam-based Web statistics firm released statistics showing the popularity of the top 5 web browsers (IE, Firefox, Apple’s Safari, Opera and Netscape) in the USA, Canada, Australia along with several EU countries.

The most popular browsers Worldwide (July 2006):

1. Microsoft IE 83.05%
2. Mozilla Firefox 12.93%
3. Apple Safari 1.84%
4. Opera 1.00%
5. Netscape 0.16%

Most popular browsers in the USA (July 2006):

1. Microsoft IE 79.78%
2. Mozilla Firefox 15.82%
3. Apple Safari 3.28%
4. Opera 0.81%
5. Netscape 0.20%

Full statics can be viewed in the OneStat article and include the following additional countries:

  • Australia
  • Belgium
  • Canada
  • France
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • Netherlands
  • United Kingdom

An interesting trend I noticed in viewing these statistics, is in the some of the countries in the EU, Firefox has an even bigger market share than in the US and Canada. I am wondering if this has anything to do with the increased legal pressures via anti-trust suits (Windows Vista) the EU is putting on Microsoft. All these anti-trust suits are not good for Microsoft but it does send the message to everyone else that there are other options, you DON’T have to use just Microsoft products on your Window’s PC.