XitiMonitor has published a couple of days ago a new report about Firefox' market share in Europe, approaching 28%. Like I told ZDNet UK, "It's a nice way to get started on a Monday morning!"
Firefox market share in Europe, July 2007. Source: XitiMonitor.com
One could argue over statistics for ever. I have met with the Xiti team a few months ago to get a better understanding of what they measure. Basically, they have what they call markers (actually small images) on literally millions of Websites, mostly in Western Europe. This means they get billions of hits every month, and then analyse which browser engine were used to display these images. There are a few caveats, as always, in such measurements:
- What they call Firefox is actually gecko-enabled browsers (mostly Firefox, but also Seamonkey, Epiphany and K-meleon);
- They measure hits, not visitors. There is a difference, in the sense that Firefox users are generally more advanced than IE users (they know what a browser is, and how to download and install software). Also, I understand that Firefox users are generally more likely to spend time online and visit more Websites.
To sum things up, XitiMonitor tracks "Gecko usage" more than "Firefox users". Both are correlated, but not identical. And both indicators are consistently going upwards (Thanks Percy for the graphs!) In some countries such as Slovenia, Firefox has passed Internet Explorer. Gerv even wants to launch a 'Hug a Slovenian' campaign 
Firefox market share consistently going upward in Europe
Just four years ago this week, AOL/Netscape/Time-Warner had decided to let go the Mozilla project, and the Mozilla Foundation was created. All of the employees paid to work on Mozilla were let go or reassigned to other tasks. Some of us decided not to give up, because the world needed a better, safer and more secure browser. While all of us hoped to make a difference, I'm not sure that many of us dreamt of seeing Firefox so successful on the market. Thank you to all of the contributors to the Mozilla project, who help build, test, promote and support a wonderful piece of software in close to 50 languages!
11 réactions
1 De Flyounet - 17/07/2007, 14:35
Désolé de ne voir que les coquilles : "M-meleon" ne devrait pas être "K-meleon" ?
2 De joey - 17/07/2007, 14:37
Bonne nouvelle.
Concernant l'article, ça aurait été sympa de remercier également les développeurs d'extensions.
Dans mon cas, c'est ce qui pèse le plus lourd dans la balance quand je le compare aux autres navigateurs "propres". Et quand je vois ceux de mes amis c'est pareil : personne n'a un Firefox sans extension, et personne n'a exactement les mêmes... chacun s'est trouvé ses extensions "indispensables".
C'est vraiment une énorme valeur ajoutée au produit de base, déjà excellent.
3 De Grauw - 17/07/2007, 15:38
What, the Netherlands isn’t big enough to have it’s own label? They could’ve fit it easily, just overlap the North sea a little! Same for Denmark btw :). Anyway, Firefox uptake in the Netherlands looks to be very disappointing. Even though our Dutch Firefox translation is so great! ^_^
4 De Groumphy - 17/07/2007, 17:03
Je tiens à préciser aussi que des journaux belges en ont parlé !
La Libre Belgique : http://www.lalibre.be/article.phtml...
Repris aussi par Google News ( http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=... )
Voila d'excellentes nouvelles mais amplement méritée.
5 De Fl0ri4n - 17/07/2007, 20:32
Firefox mérites amplement son succes
6 De Tristan - 17/07/2007, 21:15
Flyounet : corrected, thanks!
Grauw: I agree that market share in the Netherlands could be better. I hope to see it grow soon!
7 De Phil - 18/07/2007, 14:40
Tant qu'à trahir ta langue maternelle tu aurais pu écrire ce billet en slovène.
8 De Lagon Libre - 18/07/2007, 15:43
Le Libre progresse encore
Dans mon précédent billet, je décortiquais quelques nouvelles montrant une progression du logiciel Libre. Dès le lendemain, mon agrégateur favori me donnait d'autres infos qui allaient dans le même sens. Aujourd'hui encore plusieurs nouvelles......
9 De dodo - 18/07/2007, 20:51
Xiti = tracking, profilage, espionnage des habitudes de navigation.
Mozilla devrait lutter contre ça.
10 De Fred - 18/07/2007, 22:31
Very interesting. However, I wonder how the market share is in the Vatican State: Does the pope use Firefox?
11 De Neil - 21/07/2007, 01:05
Nit: SeaMonkey has a capital M.