Firefox Might Not Ever Hit a 25% Market Share

If there has been just one Web browser to give Microsoft a bit of a scare, it’s been Mozilla’s Firefox. As soon as that browser hit its 1.0 version, it simply took off, and steadily climbed the charts month after month. Not surprisingly, it was around this exact same time that Internet Explorer’s share began to fall, and even to this day, there’s rarely a month with an actual gain.

Though it doesn’t appear that the situation for IE will change too soon, it does look like the tune of Firefox might be changed if things keep up as they are. According to web analytics company Net Applications, Firefox has suffered a decline in market-share each month for the past three, making it unlikely that the browser will ever see a 25% share. That’s unfortunate, as it is currently very close 24.23%.

It doesn’t seem to be Internet Explorer that’s stealing back its users, though, but rather other browsers. Well, that might be “browser”, as only Google’s Chrome managed to see an increase last month. Part of this might be thanks to recently released Linux and Mac OS X versions, but I’d have to assume that it’s mostly growth in general from more people discovering it and enjoying it. It is a browser that does a lot right, so it seems totally plausible that it’s the real competition out there right now.

I have to say that Chrome’s rise to fame has been rather impressive. The first version came out a year-and-a-half ago, and since then, it’s managed to pass both Opera and Safari for market share, and of course, take from IE as well. Currently, Chrome claims 5.61%, while Safari and Opera snag 4.45% and 2.35%, respectively.

Between January and February, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 0.60 percentage points and Firefox slipped 0.18 percentage points. Chrome jumped a sizeable 0.41 percentage points to 5.61 percent of the market while Safari fell 0.06. Opera, on the other hand, dipped from 2.38 percent to 2.35 percent, though we’re still hoping version 10.5 will turn things around for the browser.