Firefox takes IE down another notch

Mozilla's web browser, Firefox, is becoming increasingly popular, gaining on average an extra 3.1 per cent of the market in 32 European countries in the past four months, according to French web-monitoring company XiTi Monitor.

Since its launch Firefox has been steadily gaining market share from the dominant browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). In the first week of July 2006, Firefox had 21.1 per cent of the market. In the first week of July 2007, Firefox held 27.8 per cent of the European market, according to XiTi Monitor's report.

Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, said: "It's a nice way to get started on a Monday morning. I hope we continue to gain market share, as our goal is to promote choice. Monopoly leads to lack of innovation."

Although Microsoft still has 66.5 per cent of the browser market across Europe, in certain countries Firefox has now become very popular - especially in Eastern Europe. In Slovenia, Firefox has 47.9 per cent of the market, while the browser now has over 39 per cent market share in Poland, Hungary and Croatia.

Nitot said that a major contributory factor for Firefox's success in countries like Slovenia and Poland was the support network that exists in them.

He said: "There's a very active community there - there's active forum support online. Also, if you have a problem, people from the community will come to your business and fix any potential issues."

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK