Janco has published its assessment of browser market share. Their report (found here) states that Firefox marketshare is over 10%. And the overall marketshare for Mozilla-based browsers is now over 14%. This is phenomenal.
But who is Janco Associates? Well, Janco is best known for its IT career compensation surveys. But over the past few years, they have started to diversify into a number of “survey” related reports. Consequently, I am cautious about endorsing their numbers because their methodology may not be pristine. Nevertheless, if we assume stability of their methods over time, we can use their data as a means of documenting relative changes over time.
For this reason, I offer the following table of stats derived from their recent report:
|
Apr-05 |
Jan-05 |
Net Change |
||||
|
Browser |
Rank |
Percent |
Rank |
Percent |
Rank |
Percent |
|
Internet Explorer |
1 |
83.07% |
1 |
84.85% |
-1.78% |
|
|
Firefox |
2 |
10.28% |
3 |
4.23% |
1 |
6.05% |
|
Mozilla |
3 |
3.81% |
2 |
4.48% |
-1 |
-0.66% |
|
Netscape |
4 |
0.92% |
4 |
3.03% |
-2.11% |
|
|
AOL |
5 |
0.85% |
5 |
2.20% |
-1.35% |
|
|
MSN |
6 |
0.67% |
6 |
0.58% |
0.09% |
|
|
Opera |
7 |
0.41% |
7 |
0.34% |
0.07% |
|
And the gist of their research is this: Firefox usage has grown by over 6% (of total market share). Stated differently, Janco reports that Firefox use has more than doubled since January. This is important because the first GA release of the product was in November 2004. Consequently, this growth does not include the initial growth spurt fueled by the first series of press releases. Instead, this represents sustained growth of the production release.
Combine this with Asa Dotzler’s counter indicating over 49 million downloads and you can spot a trend. Keep up the good work, team!
*Note* Amidst all the joy of breaking 10% marketshare, it is important to note where the growth is truly coming from. The largest element of growth has come from the consolidation of the Mozilla product line. More Mozilla and Netscape users turned to Firefox than did IE users. Microsoft suffered a less than 2% marketshare slide. So now that the Mozilla market has consolidated upon Firefox, let’s see how many entrenched IE users will switch over in the next six months.
-CyclingRoo-