What is Firefox’s Market Share?

In recent weeks, we’ve seen either major updates or new launches from a couple significant sources of browser market share.  Thus, we thought this would be a good opportunity to provide a high-level overview of a few sources that are out there, what their samples look like, and the ability of each to slice and dice data.

Below you’ll find four different sources of browser market share data.  Please note this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list (if you know of other good sources, please leave a comment).  I’ve sorted the following by sample size, largest to smallest, based purely on my own best guess.

1) Gemius

Gemius describes themselves as the “largest online research agency in Central and Eastern Europe”.  Even though their data is concentrated on just one region, their sample size is stellar.  Looking at any report, you can quickly see the exact number of page views that their data is based on, e.g., browser market share for last week in Poland is based on nearly 10 Billion page views.  Looking across different countries, it appears that their monthly sample size is greater than 50 Billion page views.  Better yet, all of Gemius’ market share data is free and publicly available.

gemius_example

2) Net Applications

Net Applications describes themselves as “a leading source of applications for webmasters and eMarketers”.  Their browser market share data has been published for many years and has been often relied upon by the business press.  Derived from site visitors to their network of live stats customers, Net Applications’ data is based on 160 million visitors per month.  Most of their data is available publicly, and for a small subscription fee, you can also drill into their data by region/country, by week, and in several other ways.

net_app_example

3) StatCounter

StatCounter appears a bit similar to Net Applications in that they’re a web analytics firm publishing market share reports based on data from across their customers’ web sites.  While StatCounter has been around for many years, they just recently launched their browser market share report.  They present a super slick (i.e., cool) interface where you can instantly adjust the date range, select a region/country, and choose a bar or trended line chart.  And it’s all publicly available.  They describe their sample as follows, “Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.”  So far, I’ve noticed a few inconsistencies when drilling down by region or country (and the data only dates to last summer), but otherwise, it’s good to see StatCounter recently release this service.

statcounter_example

4) AT Internet Institute (formerly Xiti)

AT Internet Institute describes itself as a company that “enables an integral analysis of websites, intranet and mobile sites”.  They have been publishing browser market share reports for nearly five years, and they collect their data in a way similar to the providers highlighted above.  For their most recent report (released last week), AT Internet Institute describes their sample as a “cross-section of 122,099 websites”.  I believe the majority of these sites are based in France, and the vast majority of the traffic comes from European internet users.  While you can’t drill down into their raw data, their quarterly reports do a fairly good job of analyzing and interpreting interesting trends.

xiti_example

10 responses

  1. Tomer Cohen wrote on :

    I am looking for data which is relevant to Israel. Beside statcounter which I am already tracking, do you know from where I can get some stats? According to statcounter we got about four more percents during the last 8 months.

  2. Asa Dotzler wrote on :

    So I’m taking from this (in really rough estimates) that we’re probably around 35% of the Web usage in Europe and probably about 25% of the Web usage globally. Not bad 🙂

  3. David Naylor wrote on :

    Yes, I think you’re roughly right Asa, and no, that isn’t bad! 🙂

    I wonder why the difference is so big between the US and Europe?

  4. Augusto Radtke wrote on :

    What about South American, mainly Brazil? Does anyone have a hint?

  5. Nick wrote on :

    AT Internet Institute’s figures are interesting. It’s Net Application’s figures that one usually sees.

    Do Net Applications aggregate data from only U.S. sites? It’s not clear … but I guess not, since you say: “you can also drill into their data by region/country”.

    Safari is much higher for Net Applications. That wouldn’t be surprising if those figures were U.S. only – the U.S. is the home market for Apple and, AFAIK, their OS share is far higher there.

    Conversely, Opera is staggeringly high for AT Internet Institute – if you’ve been used to looking at Net Application’s figures. Perhaps some European users see it as a local product and use it for that reason?

    Here’s an interesting figure: Firefox + Safari + Opera + Chrome. That’s the “alternative browser” figure or the “standards-compliant browser” figure. Either name would do.

    For Net Applications the figure is 31.65%. For AT Internet Institute the figure is 41.1%. That’s roughly a 9.5% difference.

  6. Vanger wrote on :

    If you’re looking for a market share history:
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Vanger/Marktanteil_der_Webbrowser/Tabellen_und_Diagramme

    Yep, it’s German but you propably will understand numbers 😉

  7. Tree wrote on :

    Your figures definitly help me to better understand the browser market in both US and Europe. I suggest you can get further figures in the africa, middle east, and asia regions. =)

  8. kkovash wrote on :

    Tomer — Net Applications shows Firefox market share in Israel as growing from 16% to 18% over the past six months.

  9. Damon wrote on :

    Thanks for the list guys – this is definitely helpful. Recently we had an issue on a website that only effected FF3 on Mac. Any pointers on where browser / platform stats can be gleaned from? Basically, trying to determine kind of percentages that combination has? Additionally, given both use the Gecko rendering engine wondering whether there should be any real difference on the different OSes anyway (theoretically)?

  10. financial spreadbetting wrote on :

    Google analytics always tend to show more internet explorer usage vs firefox than these stats.