Analysis – One year ago, Firefox looked like a sure bet to take over the browser market. It was the most mature of a new generation of browsers; it was trend setting in offering new features and security. It was years ahead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in virtually any measurable discipline. Firefox is still a viable choice over the Internet Explorer today, but its rivals are catching up. Especially Google’s Chrome is gaining traction and market share. What if you had to decide today which browser you should put your money on? Which one would you choose? Which one will dominate two years from now? Is Firefox doomed? Will Chrome break IE’s neck?

Predicting the future of technology is always a slippery slope. Business and product dynamics might change in an instant and render any forecast worthless and if you broadcast those numbers, you have to know that you might be eating your words within a few months. However, the browser market has always been somewhat static, beginning with the introduction of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4 in 1995. Little has changed – until recently, when a rather clumsy Microsoft missed new trends once and ignored the need for certain features browser users were looking for.

With Netscape gone, IE did not have to deal with a competitive browser, especially from a marketing point of view, for many years and Microsoft attracted important long term users that virtually locked the company into a browser monopoly: For example, businesses worldwide adopted IE6 and certified their applications for this browser. Even today, almost 9 years after its release, the browser still holds 19.71% share of the browser market – which is substantially more than IE7’s 13.78% share and only 7% behind the share of IE8. Almost one third (32.5%) of all IE users are using IE6 and, while it may still be, in an application-specific view, functional, it is outdated and is causing headaches not just with developers: Microsoft is still trying to figure out how this user base can be transitioned to IE8 and what it needs to do to prevent the user base to be lost to Firefox and/or Chrome. A platform preview of IE9 was recently unveiled, but besides more speed, there is little we know so far.

Sometime in 2008, when the browser race between Firefox, Safari and Chrome began to accelerate, Microsoft was left in the dust with an old and bulky (IE7) browser that has been bleeding market share with users at home as well as corporate environments – more than 30 points of market share in less than 5 years.

Firefox was the new popular kid on the block. The browser gained popularity at an amazing pace. First launched in late 2004, the browser now holds about 24.5% of market share, according to Net Applications, which, if we believe the market research firm, translates into about 250 million actively used Firefox versions worldwide. Until the end of last year, Firefox had been chipping away market share from IE. It appeared to be a matter of time when Firefox would be able to replace IE as the world’s most popular browser. The pace of Firefox in Q1 2009 indicated that Firefox could catch up with IE sometime in 2014.

The phenomenal growth of Firefox, however, is slowing. In fact, Firefox has shed market share: It topped out at 24.72% in November 2009 and is currently at 24.52%, according to Net Applications. Over the past month Firefox was able to score a net gain of 0.29 market share points, following four months of consistent drops. However, we hear voices that now speculate that the market share of Firefox will never climb past 25%. Over the past three months, Firefox has lost a net of 0.09 points of market share, which is less than what IE lost (2.28 points). But Safari gained 0.20 points and the big winner is Chrome, which gained 1.50 points or almost 33%. In absolute numbers, there is a drop for Firefox, but is this really the end of Firefox growth? Or has it been just a blip and Firefox can return to growth?

A Close Look: The numbers

(Note: All quoted numbers are directly retrieved from publicly available data provided by Net Applications or have been calculated from publicly available data provided by Net Applications)

Thanks to Net Applications, we can take an in-depth look of a sample of the user data of 35 million users, revealing browser usage trends around the globe. The general look at the charts shows that the market share of IE has been trending down for some time, and there is no clear indication that IE can recover anytime soon (the only positive growth shown by IE over the past two years was in the two months following the release of IE8 in March 2009.) Firefox was also stuck in negative growth territory while Opera and Safari are the most stable browsers in terms of market share.

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The only browser that shows true consistent growth at this time is Google’s Chrome. In 7 out of the past 12 months, the browser posted double-digit month over month growth and an average growth rate of just above 10% every month. Of course, Google had the advantage of a very small market share of 1.5% one year ago and easily achieved huge percentage growth, but the browser now stands at 6.13%, which is substantially more than what Safari holds (4.66%). One year ago, Safari had more than twice the market share of Chrome (3.63% vs. 1.62%).

While you can always argue that Google is working with a smaller user base and can post higher percentage gains more easily, there are some noteworthy events happening – especially since Chrome is also posting the highest absolute gains in browser market share.

Read on the next page: The State of IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari

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