|
04 January 2011 ,
Written by Dhruv Tanwar
|
|
Firefox has dethroned Internet Explorer in Europe as the number one web browser, according to web analytics company StatCounter. The loss is IE's first significant one in any major market globally.
Firefox surpassed Internet Explorer as the number one browser in Europe in December 2010 according to website analytics company StatCounter. The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats said Firefox took 38.11% of European market share, compared to IE’s 37.52% in December 2010.
“This is the first time that IE has been dethroned from the number one spot in a major territory,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share.” Google's Chrome is now in third place, gaining market share in Europe and growing to 14.58% as compared to 5.06% in December 2009. Cullen also said that IE's loss of market share could be the impact of the agreement between European Commission competition authorities and Microsoft, to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from last March.
However, in North America, IE still retains a clear lead in the browser market with 48.92% followed by Firefox (26.7%), Chrome (12.82%) and Safari (10.16%). StatCounter Global Stats is based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4.9 billion from North America) collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. |