Firefox use growing around the world, study says

12.07.2006
After a brief period of little growth this spring, The Mozilla Foundation's open-source Firefox Web browser is again gaining ground on Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE).

In its latest study on Web browser usage, Netherlands-based OneStat.com said Sunday that Firefox gained 1.14 percent in June and is now used by 12.93 percent of surfers. That's up from 11.79 percent who used Firefox in May, while IE use declined by 2.12 percent to 83.05 percent.

"We thought that Firefox growth had slowed down," said Niels Brinkman, a co-founder of OneStat.com. "It seems it's increasing again. That's a little bit of a surprise to us."

The study results were released just before Mozilla.org released the first public beta of the next version of Firefox. Beta 1 of Firefox 2.0 was made public Tuesday.

Last November, OneStat.com's survey pegged Firefox browser usage globally at 11.51 percent, up 2.82 percent from April 2005. IE at the time had a global usage share of 85.45 percent, down 1.18 percent from April 2005.

OneStat.com uses real-time Web analytics to look at which broswers are being used to view Web sites and to determine their popularity across the Internet, Brinkman said.