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Firefox 3.5 tops IE7 as most popular browser

Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 has overtaken Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular browser in the world, according to StatCounter.

By Nicole Kobie, 21 Dec 2009 at 09:11

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Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 has surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 as the most used browser in the world, according to StatCounter.

StatCounter showed that Firefox 3.5 has 21.9 per cent of the global market, edging out Internet Explorer 7's 21.2 per cent.

StatCounter Graph

However, as IE6 and IE8 also pick up 13.9 per cent and 20.9 per cent of the pie, as a whole Internet Explorer still wins 55.4 per cent per cent of the market overall, beating the 32.1 per cent share held by all the various versions of Firefox.

IE leads by a much wider margin in the US, but Firefox 3.5 overtook Microsoft's browser as the most used in Europe over the summer - despite IE again winning out overall.

In Europe, Firefox 3.5 has 28.4 per cent of the market, over IE8's 21.6 per cent, while in North America IE8 claimed 25 per cent, followed by IE7 at 21.8 per cent and then Firefox 3.5 at 21.7 per cent.

Globally, Google's Chrome has climbed into third place with 5.47 per cent, showing a bit of a rise after a version of the browser was made available for Mac and Linux users earlier this month.

Safari holds 3.4 per cent, followed by Opera at 2.1 per cent.

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4 comments

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RE:

So, remind me again, why do we need the Browser selection form in Windows? :-D

By big_D on Monday Dec 21

As a webmaster

I find this very hard to believe it is contrary to all the stats that are analysed from the sites that are under my jurisdiction IE derivatives are in the majority FF is second but this is some 10% an confirmed increase, Chrome just shows 2% Safari and Opera 0.6% and 0.4% respectfully. So I haven't a clue where they get the figures from?

By Richard_Turpin on Tuesday Dec 22

each website has its own profile

Richard, each website has its own profile. I run one where firefox is clearly dominant, and Linux has 4% share, yet it's quite a mainstream website with little obvious content that would appeal to technically sophisticated users (ie Firefox and Linux users). You can either really care about browser stats, or just make sure the website works with standards.

By timrichardson on Tuesday Dec 22

IE 6 isn't dead yet

As late as October, my webstats reported IE 6 as the largest single browser. My host splits requests by browsewr4 and operating system (and unhelpfully only reports the top 15 combinations). So it was actually IE6/XP that won, followed by IE8/Vista and IE8/XP; but Gecko/Linux came 4th?!? So I agree with Tim that the real answer is to try andcreate compatible sites.

By Petrolmaps on Tuesday Dec 22