Firefox Grows by 40% in 2009, But Most New Users Install Old Versions
The year of 2009 is behind us and we look forward to great new things for 2010. But before we get too carried away with what the new year could bring, let’s take a look at the 2009 and see how the Firefox browser did. The good news is that during 2009 Firefox grew considerably – according to Mozilla’s Blake Cutler, Firefox grew by 40%.
“2009 wraps up another year of terrific Firefox growth! Roughly keeping pace with previous years, Firefox grew 40% worldwide. Two regions in particular continued adopting Firefox at a breakneck pace — South America (64%) and Asia (73%). Most of the 40% growth occurred recently. In the 4 months leading up to the holiday season, Firefox added 22.8 million active daily users. During that same period last year, Firefox added 16.4 million users,” explained Blake Cutler.
As a Firefox fan I can only express my joy at hearing this and I can only hope that as Firefox gets better and better, it will attract even more users. And here is where we run into a problem. The current stable version of the Firefox browser is Firefox 3.5; the upcoming version is Firefox 3.6 (currently Firefox 3.6 RC1) that promises to be even better than previous versions. But do you think most new Firefox users go for 3.6 RC1 or at least 3.5, seeing how 3.6 is a release candidate? No, according to the same Blake Cutler, most new Firefox users go for old(er) software versions.
“We know that existing Firefox users update their browser remarkably quickly. However, it seems the same cannot be said of new users–those people who are installing Firefox, perhaps for the first time. Since the release of Firefox 3.5.6, only 45% of new en-US users installed Firefox 3.5.6. What about the other 55%? 24% of new users installed an old 3.5 version, while 24% and 6% of installed Firefox 3.0 and 2.0, respectively,” said Blake Cutler.
“2009 wraps up another year of terrific Firefox growth! Roughly keeping pace with previous years, Firefox grew 40% worldwide. Two regions in particular continued adopting Firefox at a breakneck pace — South America (64%) and Asia (73%). Most of the 40% growth occurred recently. In the 4 months leading up to the holiday season, Firefox added 22.8 million active daily users. During that same period last year, Firefox added 16.4 million users,” explained Blake Cutler.
As a Firefox fan I can only express my joy at hearing this and I can only hope that as Firefox gets better and better, it will attract even more users. And here is where we run into a problem. The current stable version of the Firefox browser is Firefox 3.5; the upcoming version is Firefox 3.6 (currently Firefox 3.6 RC1) that promises to be even better than previous versions. But do you think most new Firefox users go for 3.6 RC1 or at least 3.5, seeing how 3.6 is a release candidate? No, according to the same Blake Cutler, most new Firefox users go for old(er) software versions.
“We know that existing Firefox users update their browser remarkably quickly. However, it seems the same cannot be said of new users–those people who are installing Firefox, perhaps for the first time. Since the release of Firefox 3.5.6, only 45% of new en-US users installed Firefox 3.5.6. What about the other 55%? 24% of new users installed an old 3.5 version, while 24% and 6% of installed Firefox 3.0 and 2.0, respectively,” said Blake Cutler.
