Why is the growth of Mozilla Firefox Slowing?
Published on October 20, 2005 in FirefoxDave Shea and Roger Johansson are both talking about why Mozilla Firefox has seen a slow down in its growth rate, stopping at a market share of around 15%. This probably should be excepted. It matches a typical slowdown in interest for any new software release as time passes. Firefox has gotten the base of early first adopters and now must try to pick up everyone else, which is a lot harder against a competitor that is so entrenched in the marketplace. The initial Firefox enthusiasts have converted people, those who have been converted are not doing any converting themselves.
For Firefox to continue to grow above the 15% being discussed, the browser needs to come pre-installed, as the default, on boxes from major manufactures. Most people do not know what Mozilla Firefox is. They know they click on the blue ‘e’ to get to the internet and when they click on a link in their email client a web page loads in a piece of software. They are not interested in taking the time to figure out how to download another browser, when they already have one that they believe meets their needs. For most people Internet Explorer seems good enough. It will be interesting to see if the growth picks up some more with the impending release and publicity of Firefox 1.5.
