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Firefox 3.5 is Now the World’s Most Popular Browser

By Zee Follow Zee on twitter on December 21st, 2009

Site tracking and analytics tool StatCounter Global Statistics now shows that Firefox 3.5 is the most used browser in the world.

Note this is the version of the browser rather than the browser brand but nevertheless an incredible achievement. The browser surpasses IE7 as the most popular browser, with IE8 close behind thanks to the success of Windows 7.

In the US, IE8 still leads with 26% market share closely followed by IE7 and Firefox 3.5 equally tied. In Europe Firefox has led since late summer, with an impressive 28%. In Asia, IE8 and IE7 both have considerable but declining leads, with Firefox 3.5 growing the fastest of all browsers.

In March, Firefox became the most popular browser in Germany, the first time is has beaten all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer in a major country.

Picture 54

About the Author

Zee

Based in London, Zee is Editor in Chief of The Next Web. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Discussion - 45 Comments/Pingbacks RSS feed for comments on this post

  1. Keith Dsouza says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    Where is the basis for the data? Chrome is the no 3 browser in the world and no 4 in US, the graph you show has no mention of it.

    This is not current data at all. 1 year is too long a period to be judging things on considering there are browser updates every 6 months or lesser.

  2. atul says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    keith – check the graph on gs.statcounter.com for browser (not browser version). Chrome is #3

  3. lee mathews says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    I’m with Keith. Look at the bar graph – I see IE7 at 32% and Firefox 3.5 down around 8%.

    http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200811-200912-bar

  4. Mathew Ballad says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    I wonder how long it will take Chrome to become the most popular?

  5. Anonymous says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    “n the US, IE8 still leads with 26% market share closely followed by IE8 and Firefox 3.5. I”

    Which version numbers of IE would be correct in that statement? IE8 can’t be right twice.

    Thanks!

  6. Aaron T. says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    I wonder how long it will take for Opera to overtake them all :P

    j/k

    But it does seem to be the #1 browser in some countries.

  7. 0xCAFE says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    I feel dissapointed by ending of the post. Poland has 40 million citizens and Firefox is the most popular browser here for months. On one of my websites IE almost no exists.
    Germany has twice more citizens, but Poland is also major country, don’t you think? :)

  8. Igor says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    Definitely agree. Grow Firefox!
    We just had issues with IE on http://www.mytaskhelper.com
    IE even renders colors wrong, it’s very easy to crash IE using JS, when Firefox just works!

    So we added to our footer Valid HTML ~ Valid CSS -> Get Firefox!

    Lol :)

    Cheers,
    Igor

  9. Pete says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    Am I the only one who’s seeing IE doing twice as good as FF? sure Firefox has more users on a single version, but add up all the IE users (versions 6, 7 and 8) and you get way more then twice the number of FF users… It’s a nice twist of figures, but FF is far from the most popular browser.

  10. Ryan Mitchell says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    I’m with Pete on this one. for FF3.5 to be about equal to IE7 is interesting but not great. IE6 will be a going concern until XP is unsupported and the sys-admins of the world get their act together, the best we can ope for is that IE7 is replaced by IE8 sooner rather than later…

  11. mesuth says December 21, 2009
    Reply

    http://digg.com/software/World_map_of_most_popular_browsers_by_country_Infographic

    Recently I had created this world map showing the most popular browsers by country using the same date.

  12. Me says January 10, 2010
    Reply

    Good points, I think I will definitely subscribe! I’ll go and read some more! What do you see the future of this being?

  13. Jonny Q. says January 26, 2010
    Reply

    Until people stop using fag web browsers. Get with it.

  14. Muhammed Mamedov says February 28, 2010
    Reply

    I don't remember last time I used IE. I use Firefox, Chrome, Safari trio. Sad to see Microsoft's innovation machine go down like this. After all, you have to admit – guys did pretty good stuff in the past.

  15. Muhammed Mamedov says February 28, 2010
    Reply

    I wouldn't trust this data either. Maybe it is the geeks that visit those tracked sites the most, and that's why IE usage is so low compared to others. In reality I don't believe it is quite like that – most home users still use IE. And it's mainly us, Mac and Linux users who opted out of IE.

  16. Notebook says April 03, 2010
    Reply

    Interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks a lot!

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