Amsterdam (Holland) - Web analytics firm OneStat published figures last Sunday claiming the combined usage share of Firefox and Mozilla browsers (which now is mostly comprised of Firefox, but not Netscape) has climbed to nearly 13% worldwide, and almost 16% in the US. The company claims usage share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer series, including the IE7 betas, dropped by 2.12% in the last two months.

The Firefox share climbed just 1.14% during that same two-month period. With Opera's usage share at 1.0% flat already, and with Netscape almost off the map, the implication is that the other brand with net gains - the only other one that OneStat tracks - is Apple's Safari, the leading browser for Macintosh. (Old versions of Internet Explorer:mac are also included in the IE figures, so the Safari numbers may not reflect the total number of Mac browser users.)

Usage share is vastly different from market share determinations, which would gauge the number of browsers installed on users' systems.

OneStat's figures are determined scientifically, the company claims, by registering the identification reported by browsers that visit Web sites whose publishers are OneStat's customers, and normalizing that figure against Internet traffic numbers worldwide. According to the company's breakdown of major countries, Canada shows a Firefox usage of about 14.6% against IE's 80.1%, while Microsoft's numbers look better in the UK with 86.2% over Firefox's 11.6%. Firefox enjoys much broader popularity in Australia, with 24.2% versus IE's 69.3%; and most predominantly in Germany, where Firefox is flirting with the 40% mark: 39% versus IE's 56%.

Source : Tom's Hardware US