According to an analysis of the company's report by developer Alex Ivanovs, the number of Mozilla Firefox browser users has decreased by approximately 3.92% (7.4 million) over the past year. Since 2019, the browser has lost a total of 30.3% of users, equivalent to 77 million.
Mozilla acknowledges that user numbers fluctuate throughout the year, with declines during the summer and holiday seasons. This trend is evident when comparing China and the US, where both countries experience notable declines starting in late spring/early summer and ending in September. Additionally, the US sees a second decline in December/January (during the Christmas/New Year holidays), while China experiences this decline in mid-late February.
However, despite accounting for seasonal fluctuations, Firefox shows a clear overall downward trend, except in China, as highlighted by Alex Ivanovs.
Country | 2022 | 2023 | Difference |
Brazil | 9.3 million | 8.8 million | -521 thousand |
China | 20.1 million | 22 million | +1.9 million |
France | 11.4 million | 10.9 million | -487 thousand |
Germany | 19.7 million | 18.5 million | -1.2 million |
India | 12.9 million | 12.8 million | -112 thousand |
Indonesia | 8 million | 6.8 million | -1.2 million |
Italy | 5.5 million | 5.1 million | -412 thousand |
Poland | 6.2 million | 5.8 million | -421 thousand |
Russia | 6 million | 5.2 million | -786 thousand |
USA | 21.8 million | 20.7 million | -1.1 million |
All over the world | 198.4 million | 190.9 million | -7.4 million |
Market distribution among major browsers (according to Statcounter as of February 2023):
Chrome | 65.4% |
edge | 4.46% |
safari | 18.7% |
Opera | 2.4% |
Brave | 2.08% |
Firefox | 3% |
Tor | 0.24% |
Total | 96.68% |
While Mozilla has previously attributed the fall in core revenues to the pandemic, further research suggests that the shrinking user base is the primary cause. This could potentially lead to obsolescence for the browser.
Ivanovs points out that Firefox supports only a few of the 26 CSS properties introduced this year, which may pose challenges for developers. If Firefox continues to fall behind, developers may lose confidence in the platform, affecting their willingness to optimize it, concludes Ivanovs.
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