According to xitimonitor Firefox is getting 25% share in Europe. That is a huge deal – now every 4th European uses Firefox to browse the www. Here is a chart that shows European Firefox usage per country:
Besides Europe, Firefox wheels spin all over the World, for example in US over 15% of users use Firefox, for Australia it is 25%, almost 12% in South America, over 13% in Africa and around 12% in Asia. Here is a snapshot:
There are three more factors that play in favor to Firefox:
- Everybody wants MAC :)
- Ubuntu is getting very popular
- Vista is not exactly going anywhere, while XP is going, but mostly going down
For somebody who does not do any web development and uses Microsoft Windows products (XP, Vista – well who uses Vista anyway.. ), this may not sound like great news, but for everybody else it is a pleasant "turn around", and it is going towards:
- Much better browsing experience for people with MAC, Linux, and other non-M$ OSs
- No more optimizing for IE, including those ugly JavaScript if(IE)/switch(OS) statements, and different CSS
Yes, the idea is that Internet Explorer will die out the same way it was born – along with Windows
It will not happen overnight or tomorrow, but it is already happening today…