Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 27, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla VP of Engineering, has found that one in eight Firefox users is located in Germany. This emerged from an analysis of data from the Firefox Application Update Service (AUS) from December 2007, whose results Schroepfer published on his blog. He observed the strongest growth in relative user share in China. In what is now the second-largest Internet market, Mozilla is actively working to increase its market share.
According to Mozilla, Firefox AUS sends a request for updates to Mozilla’s servers about once a day. By comparing data from these AUS requests with an IP database, Schroepfer derived the global distribution of Firefox users. The largest user group is Americans, but with one in eight Firefox users, Germany has the second-largest share and is well ahead of other major European nations such as France or Great Britain. Current figures from OneStat also show Germany to be very Firefox-friendly. At almost 30 percent, Firefox’s absolute market share here is around twice the global average.
China’s relative share of Firefox users is growing fastest, Schroepfer notes. However, Firefox’s absolute market share in the Chinese market is currently only around two percent is. Since, according to the latest figures from the China Internet Network Information Centre, a total of 210 million Internet users form the second-largest market after the USA, growth in China is of great interest to Mozilla. Gong Li, CEO of Mozilla’s Chinese subsidiary Mozilla Online, recently told Asian media that the initial aim was an increase to five to ten percent. A cooperation agreement concluded in December 2007 between Mozilla’s Chinese subsidiary Mozilla Online and Chinese search engine Baidu could help. It is similarly dominant in the Chinese search market is as Google is in Western markets.
Overall, Mozilla’s Firefox reached a milestone at the end of last week. On Friday, community marketing site Spread Firefox.com reported that Firefox has passed the 500 million download mark. The actual number of users is, of course, lower than the total number of downloads. Mozilla’s current CEO John Lilly had estimated this at at least 125 million at the end of November 2007.
Further information:
- OneStat
Spread Firefox
