Chicago (IL) - Firefox 3 downloads have topped 18 million earlier today and it appears that Mozilla has picked up market share from Microsoft, but it is hardly the windfall many would have expected. According to Net Applications, Firefox is up about 0.8 points and has the 20-percent mark in reach.

Almost three million downloads in 8 hours, more than eight million in 24 hours, twelve million in two days and 18.5 million in six days. Mozilla had a successful launch and, according to Net Applications, the impact of the browser hitting the web could be seen immediately: Within one hour after launch, the company estimated Firefox 3 usage share on the Internet at about 1.2-percent. 24 hours later it was at 3.7-percent and 48 hours later at 4.6-percent. Since then, the usage share has remained somewhat stable and it is fluctuating within the 3 to 5-percent range. At least if we believe Net Applications, Firefox 3 was not able to increase its usage share since Thursday last week.

However, the research firm today stated that Firefox 3 already contributed to the bottom line of Firefox market share. Vice president Vince Vizzacaro said that Firefox market share is up to 19.27-percent, up about 5-percent or 0.76 points from 18.41-percent in May. Microsoft lost 0.8 points to 72.95-percent and Apple’s Safari declined by 0.1 points to 6.15-percent. Opera 9.5, which was released last week as well, helped Opera software to climb by 0.04 points from 0.71-percent to 0.75-percent.

Net Applications said that its survey is based on usage data drawn from about 40,000 websites. Across the Internet, usage data may be vastly different.

Source : Tom's Hardware US