Is Mozilla’s Firefox Swooping over Internet Explorer’s Turf?
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to dominate the browser market but for the first time since it beat out Netscape during late 1990s and gained dominance, its market share is sliding. IE has certainly been beaten to punch by the recently launched version of Firefox by Mozilla Foundation, the organization that developed Netscape and a predecessor, Mosaic.
Microsoft launched Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of IE 7 in the month of August whereas Mozilla released RC1 of Firefox 2.0 a month later. A set of statistics show a considerable increase in the downloads of Firefox over time, which is why the company has been successful in increasing its share of the browser market to a great extent. No one forecasts the demise of Internet Explorer any time soon. But Microsoft has woken up to the threat which Mozilla Firefox has been posing to the commercial success of IE since 2004 onwards.
Despite nepotism on part of a number of surveyors weighing heavily by the side of Firefox 2.0, surveys show IE growing its share of the browser market by 2.8 percent between the months of July and August. On the contrary, one of the reputed compilers of browser stats, Net Applications, show Firefox as a leading browser gaining12.4 percent as its total market share in the month of September. Safari, the web browser developed by Apple continues to maintain the third position, with total of 3.5 percent as its market share.
There is a growing buzz about consumers switching on to Firefox because of certain in built features so far absent in the previous versions of IE. The latest presentation of Mozilla has been appreciated for its increased download speed and an advanced user interface. Users have also applauded the pop up blocker of Firefox 2.0 as one of its best facets. But the fact that most website design company create sites that run the best on Microsoft’s IE is seen as the biggest hurdle for interested users to adopt Firefox 2.0 Also, Internet Explorer is included as the default browser with Microsoft Windows which makes it available on most PCs running on that platform.
Another set of data saw IE remaining way ahead of every other browser but not conceding the same share in the browser market. With 82.1% of the total market share in the browser market, IE has definitely seen a slide of 2.3% from its share of 84.4% in the month of June. So, a lot of confusion reigns regarding who is on top of the charts in the battle of the stats - Microsoft IE 7 or Mozilla Firefox 2.0.
Source: http://www.bessnet.com
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