

Firefox overtakes IE in Europe - rmc
http://gs.statcounter.com/press/firefox-overtakes-internet-explorer-in-europe-in-browser-wars

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ZeroGravitas
I'm amazed by how regional things are, e.g. compare Germany with the UK.
Firefox to IE is 62/22% in Germany, 23/52% in the UK.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-
monthly-201010-201012-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-
monthly-201010-201012-bar)

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-
monthly-201010-201012-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-
monthly-201010-201012-bar)

Globally, IE is at insane levels in South Korea (94%) and China (90% of which
IE6 is 54%), Firefox is doing well in the Philippines at 47% with Chrome
following close behind at 34%.

I guess the key take away is, as usual, know your own market.

edit: I wish you could easily see the countries with IE above 50%, I was
surprised to see that by these stats the US just dropped below this level,
mostly thanks to a strong showing from Apple's Safari compared with the rest
of the world.

~~~
rmc
_IE is at insane levels in South Korea (94%)_

I believe that's because all online banks don't use SSL/HTTPS, but instead
some different encryption standard, which is only available as an ActiveX
plugin, i.e. Internet Explorer only.

This is not really a truely free market where people can change.

~~~
Symmetry
It must have been a very compelling dog and pony show that Microsoft put on to
get ActiveX mandated by law in South Korea.

~~~
w1ntermute
Actually, it's because the Clinton administration made encryption protocols a
type of munition, and didn't allow the export of any with more than 40 bits
until 1999. OTOH, South Korean legislation didn't allow the use of 40 bit
encryption for online transactions, so they commissioned the Korean
Information Security Agency to create a 128 bit block cypher called SEED in
1998. At that time, ActiveX (IE) and NSPlugin (Netscape) were the only viable
technologies for this purpose that would be available on all customers'
computers. Now that Netscape's dead, only ActiveX is left.

In January 1999, RFC 2246 (128 bit SSL) was finalized and permitted for
export, but by then SEED was already entrenched. It's only now that
smartphones are starting to become popular that they're trying to change
things:
[http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2010/09/133_73601....](http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2010/09/133_73601.html)

You can read Gen Kanai's post about it on the Mozilla Asia blog for more info:
[http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-
monocultu...](http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/)

~~~
stcredzero
What if someone revived the NSPlugin and/or implemented SEED for Chrome and
Firefox?

~~~
briansmith
Firefox already has SEED for TLS in the crypto library we use (NSS). AFAICT,
the problem now is mostly getting bank websites to change. I believe some
Korean banks have indicated that they will start supporting the standard
mechanism in addition to the ActiveX control.

People from Mozilla China have recently pointed out to me the crypto-related
issues in China. My understanding is that you can make Firefox do what you
need for Chinese banking but it requires unintuitive configuration and/or
hard-to-get drivers. I am hoping that sometime this year we will make
improvements to make smartcards plug-and-play on platforms (like Windows) that
support it. This will be a nice benefit not only for Chinese users, but also
for any other smartcard users.

------
joakin
This makes me really happy, I was really afraid that Chrome would cannibalize
usage from Firefox users, and even it does at a certain point, its really
small compared to the users it takes from IE. ^_^

~~~
ido
Why does it bother you if people switch from ff to chrome?

~~~
joakin
Because it's an open project that symbolizes the freedom of the Internet,
besides from being a wonderful browser driven by passionate people from the
company and the community.

Also, it's a matter of respect. The fight for an open web and liberation from
microsoft tirany has made possible to have this huge network of knowledge that
is changing the society from its basis, allowing truly free exchange of
information and culture and an universal way of communicating with whoever you
want.

I know chrome is better in many aspects, but represents the desires of a
company that only wants to be richer. The open web google promotes it's just
part of their expansion plan, and I need to remind me this each time I use
their wonderful browser.

Sorry for extending but this topic always touches feelings

~~~
vanni
Chrome is 95% Chromium, and Chromium is open source as Firefox is! This is why
I like them both! ;D

<http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-projects>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)>

------
shimonamit
Corporate-land is still IE in the high percentages, including IE6. Hoping,
wishing Chrome's new "ready for business" features will dent that...

~~~
iconfinder
I can confirm that many corporations still use IE6 for some reason. It's quite
ironic how much the value security, but on the other hand let their employees
use a 10 year old browser.

~~~
umjames
That's because most companies are not technology companies. They purchase all
of their IT infrastructure instead of building anything in-house. So if the
vendors they buy from only support IE6, their customers will be stuck with IE6
until the vendor decides to upgrade or their customers go with someone else.

~~~
Seth_Kriticos
It's worse. Most of the time the companies buy these locked in software, then
the vendor goes AWOL and nobody can fix the mess, so they just try to stick to
it until it horribly fails.

IE6 still has extended support with XP, but in a few years things will be very
bleak for some of these companies.

But it's not all bad, some enterprises have a modicum of reason, solve the
problem and at least try to avoid getting in the same mess again. At least
that's the trend I perceive.

------
lwhi
I'd like to see Google providing aggregated browser stats from the data it
collects via Analytics.

------
vanni
This post title should be: "Firefox overtakes IE in Europe (thank you
Chrome!)"

------
riffraff
I guess this could mean the enforced browser ballot is having a large effect
on the market? It would be nice to see growth rates compared between regions.

~~~
ugh
If you take their data at face value, IE plateaued in late 2009, early 2010
after a long downward trend (from nearly 60% down to about 45%) in Europe.
IE’s share only started to go down again in April and from then on slowly but
steadily dropped to its current low level. That could support your hypothesis.
The browser ballot came with a Windows update that was delivered on March 17
2010.

The only problem I see is that the current downward trend is nothing special
if you zoom out a bit. As I already said, that plateau was preceded by a long
downward trend. 2008 and 2009 look just like 2010. (StatCounter has no data
from before July 2008.) IE has been steadily losing browser share for a long
time.

I’m consequently not ready to make any definitive statements about the effects
of the browser ballot.

------
nice1
Does this mean the Europeans are smarter? Can't be ...

