The Firefox User | Adopting Firefox
Firefox has encountered explosive growth as a result of its grassroots campaigns and localization. However, its demographics continue to be isolated in terms of user type and locale. In addition, Firefox has had trouble penetrating Microsoft "strongholds" like China. Despite the seeming popularity of Firefox, it still holds only a small percentage of the total browser share. Demographics are quickly changing, however, and Firefox maintains a grip on the sector of the population most likely to adopt web and web technologies in the coming decades. Thus, the entire face of the browser industry may change as a result of the changing population of the world.
In 2007, comScore performed a study examining the differences between those who used Firefox as their primary browser versus those who used Internet Explorer as their primary browser. They found telling differences between the two groups. Firefox users are younger than the average internet user: a Firefox user is 69% more likely to be between the ages of 18-24 than an IE user.1 Firefox also captured a much percentage of users in the University market than in other markets (Home and Work), suggesting that Firefox users are more educated, or are seeking to be better educated. The study also shows that a far greater percent of Firefox users than IE users visit Education websites, sites that sell books, and reference/resources websites.
In addition to education and reference websites, comScore also found that Firefox users are much more likely to visit sites offering online services such as software downloads and web hosting, technology related sites, and technology related sites. Even more significant is the fact that Firefox users are more likely to visit “user-generated content” sites, or sites oriented towards Web 2.0. Only recently in December of 2007 did the number of IE7 users overtake the number of IE6 users,2 more than a year after IE7 was released. This contrasts sharply with the fact that shortly after Firefox 2 was released, a solid majority of users upgraded from Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 2 in as short a time period as two months. This further supports that fact that Firefox users are more likely to be active internet users, engaging in the current internet trends while IE users still include a large number of passive users that will slowly fade away.
Some argue the point that Firefox growth will plateau because it has not crossed over into mainstream usage &emdash; Home and Work users ages 30-50. They contend that Firefox is used by the technologically savvy and the early adopter market. However, these young early adopters will eventually become mainstream users while the preferences of current “mainstream” users will gradually fade away. These younger users are the ones that are shaping the internet, starting with social networking and user-generated content of Web 2.0 and moving onwards to whatever Web 3.0 will bring. It is the preferences of the educated younger user market segment that will dictate the internet usage trends in the future, which is why we believe that Firefox market share will continue to grow, provided the developers continue their trend of innovation.
A handful of companies and firms have been tracking browser usage statistics, and while the numbers seem to vary a little, the trend is clear: Firefox market share has been and still is steadily growing. Currently, the estimates for Firefox’s global market share hovers above 21%, according to numbers compiled from the French firm XiTi Monitor, W3Counter, Internet World Stats, and Market Share.
What is remarkable is how well Firefox is doing internationally. Based on a sample of 112,000+ sites, XiTi Monitor compiled the latest web browser utilization figures for December 2007.3 Europe’s Firefox usage numbers were climbing at astounding rates in 2007. Some countries are even rapidly approaching the 50% mark (Finland and Slovenia are both right around 45%). As a continent, Europe currently averages 28% Firefox usage, which puts it far ahead of all other parts of the world, minus Oceania (Australia and the tropical islands).
There is a lot of speculation, but no clear reasons on why Firefox has taken such a strong stand in Europe. Some people suggest that since it is open source, many more volunteer developers are willing to help code and maintain Firefox in their native language, whereas Microsoft may overlook a smaller country because it does not hold a market with enough potential. This seems to be confirmed with the fact that Firefox is available in over 40 different languages. However, this cannot be the whole story &emdash; the four million Irish speak English, and they have a very high percentage of Firefox users (~30%). Yet the Netherlands,
which has a distinct language in addition to a population of 16 million, has some of the lowest Firefox penetration in all of Europe.
Despite Europe’s impressive growth from 23.2% to 28% in 2007, South America saw the largest gain of any continent, climbing from 11.1% to 20.2%. The other continents hovered around 4-6% market share gain during 2007, with North America growing from 14.5% to 21%, Asia from 11.8% to 16.5%, and Africa from 12.4% to 16.6%. These numbers4, 5 are very impressive, but Firefox has not had such great success in all countries. One large market that has proven difficult for Firefox to penetrate is the country of China. Microsoft has already conquered China, and almost all of China has adopted IE as a standard platform for their business ventures.
Not only are Chinese consumers largely unaware of open-source software, but Windows and IE are embedded into the Chinese computing culture. Bill Gates has openly acknowledged that tolerating piracy turned out to be one of Microsoft’s winning strategies in China.6 With over 90% of PCs in China running Windows, IE easily became the working standard. In a country where piracy runs rampant, Firefox’s advantage of it being open source and free is nullified.
- http://www.comscore.com/blog/2007/04/firefox_vs_internet_explorer.html
- Market Share, by Net Applications, has catalogued the browser usage numbers from March 2006 to the present: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=3
- XiTi Monitor, December 2007. http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-EN/barometre-des-navigateurs/firefox-decembre-2007/index-1-1-3-117.html
- http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
- http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
- http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/23/100134488/
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