Firefox Passes 20 Percent, IE Continues to Shed
According to the most recent Net Applications figures, Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser has cracked the 20 percent mark in terms of worldwide market share last month, though the holiday season could have something to do with its success in December.
Firefox finished December with 21.34 percent of the browser market, an increase of 0.56 percentage points from its 20.78 percent share in November.
Apple’s Safari browser added 0.80 percentage points to its 7.13 percent market share in November to finish with 7.93 percent of the market in December.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer shed 1.62 percentage points to finish December with 68.15 percent of the market. It finished with 69.77 percent of the market in November.
Google Chrome, which recently exited the beta stage, claimed the fourth spot by passing Opera in December. Chrome added 0.21 percentage points to finish the year with 1.04 percent of the browser market, while Opera finished with 0.71 percent.
At least some of Firefox’s success in December can be attributed to the boost in residential Web usage during the holiday season. Since Firefox’s residential share far exceeds its corporate share, Net Applications said the month’s data is a bit skewed in favor of Firefox.
Sources:
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=011000NAPDHI
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2009/01/05/december-2008-firefox-safari-and-chrome-grab-more-users
