Firefox, Safari back on browser attack

They continue to nibble at Internet Explorer's market share

By Gregg Keizer

March 2, 2007 12:00 PM ET

Comments

Computerworld - Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox and Apple Inc.'s Safari Web browsers both continued to snare market share from Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) last month, a Web metrics company said today.

According to Net Applications' February data, both Firefox and Safari accounted for slightly larger slices of the browser pie than the month before. IE, on the other hand, slipped by nearly the same amount.

Firefox, which sports versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, climbed to 14.2% from January's 13.7%. Safari, which is bundled with Mac OS X, rose as well, to 4.9% from 4.7%. Internet Explorer's share dropped to 79.1% from last month's 79.8%.

"After a minor hiccup in January, Firefox seems to be back on the offensive in February," Vincent Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing and strategic relationships, said in an e-mailed newsletter. "January showed a brief halt to Firefox's assault on Microsoft Internet Explorer's market share. Could that have come from new Vista machines? Possibly, but it appears that browser users have gone back to switching to Firefox, Safari and Opera."

Opera, a browser from a Norwegian company by the same name, increased its market share slightly, from 0.73% to 0.79%.

The newest versions of both Firefox and IE, meanwhile, also boosted their share during February. Firefox 2.0, released last November, climbed to 7.8%, a 1.5% one-month gain. IE7, which runs on both Windows XP and Vista, increased to 29.1%.

The take-up of IE7, however, has slowed substantially over the past four months. Released to XP users in late October 2006, IE7 has been pushed by Microsoft as a high-priority update through Windows' built-in Automatic Updates, one reason why IE7 use leaped nearly 10% from November to December and by more than 7% from December to January. IE7 adoption has slowed since then; it rose by only 4% from January to February.

Charts that show Net Applications' most recent data are available online.

Comment Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Jump to comments

Firefox

Additional Resources

Xerox

Win a color printer!

By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!

Microsoft

Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today.

Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

What People Are Saying

0 comments | Add new

See all comments (0) | Add new

White Papers & Webcasts

IDC White Paper: The Economic Impact of File Virtualization
Reduce costs and improve efficiency for file-based storage.

Aligning IT to Business: The Rising Importance of Application Delivery Networks
Application Delivery Networking (ADN) will play a vital role in helping enterprises incorporate strategic technologies to achieve business initiatives.

The 2009 Handbook of Application Delivery
Learn how to become better with application delivery.

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future
Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service?

Unified Application Delivery
By providing a unified Application Delivery Networking platform, F5 BIG-IP offers the ability for organizations to adopt a single platform for all its...

BMC Application Performance and Analytics: Predictive Intelligence in Action
See the highlights of BMC's Application Performance and Analytics today!

ROI of Application Delivery Controllers
How modern offload technologies in Application Delivery Controllers can drastically reduce expenses in traditional and virtualized architectures, with a fast ROI.

IPAM: Slashing Network Costs
Slashing Network Costs by Consolidating and Automating Core Network Services

Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing...

Key Strategies for Managing Data Growth
What are you storage challenges?

All White Papers | All Webcasts