NetApplications, a provider of Web-based applications that measure, monitor and market Web sites for Small to Medium Enterprises (SME), today announced its monthly Web site traffic analysis. In October 2005, browser usage numbers indicated that Mozilla’s Firefox browser is regaining the momentum that had stalled for the last three months. Apple’s Safari also continued to show modest, but steady growth.
With previous stumbles throughout the last few months behind it, Firefox’s market share started to climb again, propelled by Mozilla’s recent announcement that Firefox had achieved its 100,000,000th download. Firefox averaged 8.59% of the browser usage market share throughout October, but even more interesting is its sprint in the final week in October, peaking at 8.65%. By year-end Mozilla expects to release Firefox 1.5, which promises improvements to the automated update system, Web site rendering and performance, as well as several security and bug fixes.
Over the last 12 months, Apple’s Safari browser showed steady growth in browser usage and made gains each and every month. One year ago, Safari held 1.46% of market share. By October 2005, that percentage grew to 2.56%. While recent reports have Apple Macintosh share growing to 2.5% of total PCs shipped, Net Applications HitsLink reports that the Mac OS is up to 3.87% usage market share for October 2005.
“Firefox enjoyed a tremendous first six months of 2005, starting at 2.69% market share in January and peaking at 8.71% in June, with its crescendo of 8.65% in the final week of October,” observed Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of marketing and strategic relationships at NetApplications in the press release. “The other notable activity in October may be more of a hardware market share story. Apple’s Safari continues to gain momentum and simultaneously, HitsLink market share data also shows the Mac OS following a similar growth path. The numbers indicate larger consumer operating system usage over new PC shipments, suggesting that either Mac users hold on to their computers longer than Windows based system owners do, or that Mac users browse the internet significantly more. When the iPod’s success is combined with Macintosh market share gains, it appears that Apple is definitely on the right growth path.”
October Browser Market Share:
• Microsoft Internet Explorer — 86.52%
• FireFox — 8.59%
• Safari — 2.56%
• Netscape — 1.26%
• Opera — 0.54%
• Other — 0.53%
September Browser Market Share:
• Microsoft Internet Explorer — 86.87%
• FireFox — 7.55%
• Safari — 2.39%
• Netscape — 2.16%
• Opera — 0.51%
• Other — 0.51%
Additional stats are available at http://marketshare.hitslink.com
Data for this article was compiled from global traffic statistics from Web sites tracked by NetApplications’ HitsLink.com.
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Report: Apple Safari hits 3.55% share in US, Firefox hits 11.51% worldwide – November 02, 2005
Not bad for a Mac ONLY application. It says a lot about the market share for Macs as well.
That Halo effect again
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There is some magic percentage that Apple Mac will hit that will launch the avalanche of switching. Might be 5% it might be 7% but it exists and will come.
The positive spiral that Apple is on is building momentum folks. Going to get very interesting and mark my words Microsoft will start playing very dirty.
Or the Hello effect as I like to call it.
(I got nothing)
Microsoft will “start” playing dirty. Didn’t you mean to say that they will make the dirt dirtier?
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It would be interesting to correlate these statistics against statistics that represent the percentage of users affected by virus, spyware and adware. Curently 86% are experiencing malware infestation. So, when Microsoft IE usage goes down to 42% will the malware statistic approach a similar number (42%). Will people finally start to “Get It”.
I guess I need to start using Safari to boost up the percentage. Right now I only use Firefox on my Macs. Just getting to old to learn a new browser. More Kool-Aid please.
mdn,
why is there a MS Windows server on your site???
Firefox and Safari are nearly identical.
Safari so good.
I don’t use Safari or Firefox, ‘cos I hate animated ads. What was Apple thinking, to not include the ability to turn off animated GIFs. That’s so stupid. And Firefox requires “plug-ins” which I never found the right ones to stop animations, also stupid. Camino, on the other hand, rocks.
Camino or Shiira, whichever updated most recently [MW], but iCab will filter away specific ads for ya and you never have to see their ugly, noisy crap again.