Mozilla Firefox sees drop in market share

Mozilla Firefox sees drop in market share

Internet Explorer seems to be back on the popularity charts as Microsoft released a private beta of their upcoming web browser Internet Explorer 7 a couple of days back. The latest statistics revealed by NetApplications, a company that compiles browser usage data claims that for the first time since its launch, Mozilla Firefox has suffered a drop in its market share and popularity as a result. IE seems to have taken the advantage of this drop in market share for Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox.

According to the latest statistics, for the month of July, Firefox’s market share dipped to 8.07 per cent from a high of 8.71 per cent in June. Internet Explorer continues to dominate the web browser market on the Internet and now has an approximate market share of 87.2 per cent up from 86.6 per cent. Dan Shapero, chief operating officer for NetApplications, said in a statement about the latest market trends: “Microsoft’s Internet Explorer actually gained ground at the expense of Firefox.”

Firefox has had massive success since its launch during the last months of 2004. The browser rapidly saw millions of downloads by the web users and had one time climbed to around 9% of the market share. The software is open source and makes available the source code of the application as opposed to the Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It even allow third party developers to provide add-ons called extensions to enhance the functionalities of the web browser making it more capable than Internet Explorer.

Things should get more interesting after Microsoft launches the final version of Internet Explorer 7 in the end market. However, with minimum requirement of Windows XP with Service Pack 2, it might not attract that many web users. Mozilla Firefox on the other hand is available for tons more platform and is currently being ported to the Mobile platform in the form of Mozilla Minimo.