Firefox gains ground on Internet Explorer

By Shaun Nichols on Nov 9, 2006 9:48 AM
Filed under Software

Mozilla outpaces Microsoft in browser growth during October.

A recent study suggests that Mozilla's Firefox is continuing to gain ground on Microsoft's Internet Explorer following the launch of new versions of both browsers.

The report, conducted by Dutch research firm OneStat, found that Firefox increased its global market share by 0.66 percent in October to reach 12.15 percent.

Despite losing ground to Firefox, Internet Explorer maintained its stranglehold with 85.24 percent of the global market share.

Apple's Safari browser was a distant third at 1.61 percent, while Opera and Netscape each recorded less than one percent.

The study also found that Firefox users are rapidly adopting the updated version of the browser.

Released on 24 October, Firefox 2.0 has now been adopted by 19.5 percent of all Firefox users.

Internet Explorer 7, which was released five days before Firefox 2.0, has only been adopted by 3.05 percent of all Internet Explorer users.