Today the Firefox download counter over at SpreadFirefox.com has past the 23,000,000 mark. I wonder if Firefox has surpassed AOL's 22.2 million users.
We don't have solid usage stats and I've been mostly going on the numbers I see from OneStat, TheCounter, and WebSideStory. The only problem there is that while they all generally agree that Gecko is somewhere between 7% and 8% of the market, neither say how large that market is. I suspect that they're assuming a global share of between 500 million and 800 million users (though this is nothing more than a guess.)
If that's anywhere close to reality, then there should be between 35 million and 60 million Gecko users. Assuming that a bit more than half of those are Firefox users (and the rest are legacy Seamonkey users or Netscape users) then there's a very real chance that Firefox usage is very close to or already past the size of AOL's user base.
What do you all think? Do you have any better sources of information here?
Posted by asa at February 6, 2005 10:39 PMCheck the link to Spreadfirefox.com.
Posted by: Praveen on February 6, 2005 11:55 PMJust out of intrest- do OneStat etc. measure browser usage in total internet usage or in number of users? I use the internet for one-two hours per day, while my grandparents (who also use Firefox, btw :) use it maybe only once or twice a fortnight.
I would imagine that of the people like my grandparents a much larger majority just use IE and the heavier internet users are more likely to use a 3rd party browser. Therefore the results showing 10% usage arent actually 10% of internet users- just 10% internet usage.
...or does everyone know this and I've just clicked?
Posted by: Phill Bryant on February 7, 2005 12:04 AMAccording to OneStat, TheCounter, WebSideStory, Ranking.pl, Liveinternet.ru, Webhits.de, Navrcholu.cz, Xitimonitor.com (fr) and other sources Firefox has cca 5 % marketshare (or more) at many different geographic areas.
According to http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/151151
Worldwide Internet Population is cca 1 billion now.
1 billion * 0,05 = cca 50 million (and probably more). But it's no doubt there are dozens million Firefox users, much more than number of downloads (cca 23 million now), becaouse 1 copy of Firefox is very often installed on many PC (friends, acquaintances, co-workeres..., school/library/college networks..., CD distribution with PC magazines, linux distributions...)
People around the world, keep spreading the Firefox, we are taking back the web!
Posted by: Petr Tomeš on February 7, 2005 12:56 AM... at the same time as copies could be downloaded and not used. ;-)
Although I would guess the downloads-are-installed-on-several-computers factor is bigger.
Posted by: David Naylor on February 7, 2005 12:59 AMOn the AOL numbers - that 22.2m figure is USA domestic, the worldwide number is around 30m.
Another point on your workings is the incorrect usage vs users assumptions - you're assuming that every browser user browses the same amount, and that every user only uses one browser. In fact, I would guess Firefox/Gecko users are likely to be heavier web users than IE users, so with Firefox you'll have less users per percentage point of usage.
Posted by: michaell on February 7, 2005 01:18 AMI'm sure a lot more than half of Gecko users are firefox users. Suite is probably a fourth and Netscape a tenth or even less. See the W3C ratios.
Posted by: randomwalker on February 7, 2005 01:43 AMI'm sure a lot more than half of Gecko users are firefox users. Suite is probably a fourth and Netscape a tenth or even less. See the W3C ratios.
Posted by: randomwalker on February 7, 2005 01:43 AMCan't you get some usage statistics (number of active Firefox users) from the requests for the default Live Bookmark in Firefox?
Posted by: Rijk on February 7, 2005 01:59 AMthats not the W3C. thats w3 schools. completely different.
Posted by: randomwalkeriswrong on February 7, 2005 04:21 AMWhen looking at the numbers from TheCounter (and assuming that the browser refered to as "-" is firefox) it seems that firefox users are primarily former mozilla/netscape users, and that IE is growing in share again (but this might also be because firefox is mostly used by home users?):
http://www.serveren.dk/images/browser.gif
I've written quite a bit about a variety of stats sources over the last few months at http://www.livejournal.com/community/stats_weenie/
I reckon Firefox alone is at about 5% in many parts of the world (possibly higher in some regions) and growing at about 1% every 6-8 weeks.
Randomwalker may not understand the difference between w3schools and w3c, but I reckon he's right about Firefox having far more users than other gecko browsers - my personal guess would be about 75-80% of Gecko users.
Among heavy internet users, I reckon Firefox has more than the 5% in the general market, but I'm not going to go out on a limb by attaching a figure to that statement.
I'd also recommend treating TheCounter.com's figures for Dec 2004/Jan 2005 with extreme caution. See the early january postings on stats weenie for my reasoning.
Posted by: blufive on February 7, 2005 01:41 PMSo, why the march /beyond/ 10 million instead of some other goal? I'm kinda' waiting and excited to see where the Firefox marketing folks would like to go next with this stuff.
~ Kevin
Posted by: KevinFreitas on February 7, 2005 04:12 PM