Topic: Firefox loses market share while IE, Safari see minor growth

[Amker]

New statistics from Net Applications, a company that measures browser, search engine, and operating system metrics, show that for the first time since January of this year, Firefox actually lost market share. Based on statistics from its own client base, Net Applications shows that Firefox fell almost a full percentage point to 14.54 percent—the largest drop in market share the browser has seen yet.

For May, Firefox's loss may have been Internet Explorer and Safari's gain. Internet Explorer accrued roughly half of a percent (0.64) in market share while Safari rose from 4.59 to 4.82 percent. According to Net Applications' statistics, this is the first time since January that Internet Explorer has seen an increase in market share.

In the world of operating systems, both Windows Vista and Mac OS X/MacIntel saw jumps, rising from 3.02 and 6.21 percent to 3.74 and 6.46 percent respectively. Windows 2000 was also notable, ringing in at 4.31 percent. Not surprisingly, Windows XP is still leading the pack with 82.02 percent in May.

Now that Safari is running on Windows, the browser numbers may take some twists and turns in June. According to Apple, at least 1 million users have downloaded Safari for Windows, and that could add a little spice to what has been fairly predictable usage statistics. Do you think the "1 million users" will show in next month's numbers? Is anyone actually using the Safari beta on a regular basis? On a different note, how many of you have switched from Firefox to IE7? I've talked to several people who now prefer IE7 over the 'Fox, so I'm not surprised that Mozilla's starting to lose users.

Ars Technica