UK lags in Firefox usage

By Steve Malone

Posted on 20 Jul 2006 at 10:15

More than a quarter of German computer users access the World Wide Web using Firefox. According to a new survey by the web analytics company WebSideStory, 26.8 per cent of German web requests used the open source browser. In Germany this leaves the various flavours of Internet Explorer on 65.04 per cent with other browsers such as Safari, Netscape and Opera making up the rest.

'For whatever reason, Germans have always seemed to embrace alternatives to Microsoft when it comes to web browsers,' commented Geoff Johnston, a WebSideStory analyst. 'Netscape was also very popular in Germany during the late 1990s. Firefox appears to have a stronger foothold in some European countries than in the US. Most of these gains appear to have come at the expense of Microsoft'

Despite the publicity and the general good will behind the open source browser, the UK is well behind other European countries with only 8.82 per cent penetration of Firefox. This compares with France at 14.89 per cent, Italy with 12.46 per cent and Spain on 9.86 per cent. With only a tiny 2.8 per cent market share for other alternative browsers, this gives Microsoft a massive 88.78 per cent UK share - higher than its share in the US.

Firefox's usage share in the US appears to have slowed recently with only a 0.54 rise in the past six months while it seems to be getting a head of steam in Europe. For example, in Germany, the browser gained 1.4 percentage points between January and June of this year, while in Italy it gained 2.1 percentage points.