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.
The chart below plots Firefox active daily users over the last 17 months. The top smoothed line shows our recent growth pattern, while the lower smoothed line shows growth in the previous year. The dotted blue line projects active daily users, based upon historical trending.
In case you’re curious, the seasonal holiday dip (above) falls in line with overall Internet usage patterns, and it was actually slightly milder than we predicted. Historically, we have seen a 15% decline in Firefox usage around Christmas.
All in all, 2009 was a great year for Firefox. The entire community deserves a ton of credit for the continued rapid pace of Firefox adoption.
That’s awesome! Congrats all.
It’s odd that in the land of choice and freedom (not that it’s the only one), and freedom to choose, it’s areas outside of the U.S. that people are choosing not to just settle for what’s been put in front of them, or imposed upon them.
Great to hear, that Firefox gets more and more popular. So what is the market share for Firefox on the different contintents?
Market share Dec ’09:
29% Africa
26% Asia
41% Europe
31% North America
32% South America
Market share in individual countries can be quite different:
77% Indonesia
61% Germany
56% Hungary
53% Finland
4% China
Source: StatCounter GlobalStats