Firefox Passes 10 Percent Usage Share

Browser market share statistics from Web analytics firm OneStat.com indicate that usage of Mozilla Firefox has surpassed the 10 percent milestone, reaching 11.51 percent globally in its most recent survey released Wednesday.

However, the data somewhat conflicts with previous information that indicated usage numbers of the alternative browser might have been inflated due to Netscape reporting itself as Firefox. That survey, from NetApplications.com, placed Firefox's market share at around 8 percent.

The latest numbers from OneStat.com indicated a wide disparity in Firefox usage between various countries. In the United States, Firefox has a 14.07 percent market share versus Internet Explorer's 80.73 percent. Usage of Apple's Safari was also high, at about 3.55 percent.

In Canada, meanwhile, Firefox enjoys nearly a whopping 17 percent share, and has successfully pushed IE below 80 percent. Apple's Safari Web browser again is third with just over two percent market share.

In the United Kingdom, however, IE remains dominant with a 93 percent market share. Firefox holds less than five percent of the market in the UK, according to OneStat.com, and Safari less than one percent.

"The global usage share of Mozilla's browsers is still growing and it seems that Netscape users and some Internet Explorer users are switching to the Firefox version," OneStat.com co-founder Niels Brinkman said. "It also looks like that browser users of Internet Explorer for Apple's Mac are switching to Safari because the global usage share is still growing."

In terms of changes from OneStat's last report back in April of this year, Internet Explorer is down 1.18 percent, while Mozilla Firefox is up 2.82 percent, and Apple Safari up a half-percent.

It should be noted that Netscape's share fell by about three-quarters of a percent - as much as NetApplications said was needed to correct the inflation of Firefox usage.

OneStat.com says its numbers are obtained from a sample of 2 million users from 100 countries over the period of one week.