Firefox tops 150 million downloads

Chicago (IL) - In early February, Mozilla reported that its Firefox web browser had passed the 150 million download mark - but had to revise this statement due to mistakenly counted downloads of software updates. Now the counter has topped 150 million again and it appears to be official, even if Mozilla has not made an announcement so far.

As of Friday morning, the download counter on spreadfirefox.com showed 152.3 million downloads. This new milestone comes about five months after the 100 million mark was hit in October of last year.

While downloads of Firefox appear to be fairly constant and stroll along at a pace of about two to three million downloads every week, it appears as the recent release of Firefox 1.5 caused a slight acceleration of interest in the software : It took Firefox a little over six months to reach the first 50 million, just about six months to hit 100 million and little more than five months to get to 150 million.

While downloads post increased, Firefox appears to be in a standstill in terms of market share. Just one month after the software’s launch in November of 2004, the browser posted a 3% share. According to Onestat.com, that figured climbed to about 11.5% in November 2005. A recent survey by WebSideStory, released in January of this year, estimates the current market share of Firefox at 8.9%.

Related articles :
Firefox 1.0 released
Automated scripts inflating IE’s market share ?