Elizabeth Millard, newsfactor.com
The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser has reached 100 million
downloads only five months after hitting the 50 million mark and just
a few weeks prior to the one-year anniversary of its formal release.
While the browser has seen download rates spike over the past year,
the adoption of the browser mainly has been a steady growth path, the
foundation noted. At this point, between 200,000 and 300,000 downloads
occur per day.
Mozilla has openly thanked its thousands of contributors worldwide for
efforts that have caused adoption to go far beyond expectations.
"Their work developing and fine-tuning the Firefox browser ensures the
best Web experience available," Mozilla noted in a
statement. "Volunteer extension developers further enrich Firefox's
capabilities by enabling users to customize and enhance their browser
and truly take back the Web."
Growing Pains
Getting to the 100 million mark might be cause for celebration at
Mozilla, but the organization has not been without its challenges.
Most notably, the browser has had several security flaws reported, and
its marketing site, SpreadFirefox.com, was recently brought down by
hackers.
A Symantec report noted that Mozilla browsers had more reported
vulnerabilities than Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) Internet Explorer
in the first half of 2005, but the report also noted that the Microsoft
flaws were considered more serious.
Choppy Waters Ahead
While pundits continually have said that the adoption rates for
Firefox will slow, the ranks of Firefox users have grown, indicating
that it is nibbling away at Internet Explorer's formidable market
share.
Gartner (NYSE: IT - news) analyst Ray Valdes said it is possible that
use of the Firfox browser will see a significant drop once Microsoft's
next OS is released and subsequent changes are made to the Internet
Explorer browser.
"Much will depend on how Microsoft ties Internet Explorer to its big
releases next year," said Valdes. "They may not have planned to
emphasize Internet Explorer, but I think Firefox's adoption rate is
something they're noticing."
At this point, many enterprise I.T. departments are looking at Firefox
as a viable alternative to Internet Explorer. This interest could
product the kind of corporate endorsement necessary for the browser to
keep growing, noted Valdes.
Copyright 2005 NewsFactor Network, Inc.
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