Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share--Firefox Above 20%

NetApplications is out with a couple of new metrics of market share for operating systems and browsers, and the news is good for open source. Topping their findings, Microsoft Windows' market share has dropped below 90 percent for the first time in its measurements. The share erosion is largely attributed to increased interest in the Mac platform, but Linux is cited as on the rise as well. In addition, for the first time since it launched its metrics, NetApplications' data shows Firefox's market share topping 20 percent.

On the browser front, NetApplications finds Firefox to have achieved 20.78% market share for the month of November, and the complete breakdown for browser market share is seen in their graphic below.

"Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla," said Mozilla CEO John Lilly.  "It's a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible."

For November, NetApplications also found that Microsoft Windows had 89.6% market share, the first time share has been under 90% since the early days of Windows. Meanwhile, Apple's operating system market share climbed in November to 8.9% and Linux's share grew from 0.71% to 0.83%.

Firefox's achievement, in particular, is very notable. I clearly remember when Netscape had more than 80 percent browser market share, and when Internet Explorer had 95 percent share. Primarily through its universe of useful extensions, contributed by the community, Firefox proved to be the upstart browser that could. Now, given the fact that extensions are going to come out for Google Chrome, I expect we'll see even more challenges to Internet Explorer from open source browsers.