According to web survey company, Net Applications, since the release in mid-June, Firefox 3’s worldwide usage has soared to more than 4 percent. In the first hour of its release, the latest version of the open source browser grabbed 1 percent of the global market. Other browsers, including Apple's Safari and Opera Software ASA's Opera, also gained ground in June.

Firefox closed the month with a 19 percent share, up 0.6 percent over May, while IE slipped 0.7 percent to 73 percent. Safari, meanwhile, was up 0.06 percent to 6.3 percent, while Opera increased its share by 0.02 percent to 0.7 percent.

Mozilla’s officials announced that even though most of the Firefox 3 users are people updating their Firefox 2 browsers, there is a cut of about 0.4 percent of the users that switch to their product at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Since August 2007, Internet Explorer's share has declined from 79 percent, while Firefox has risen over the last 10 months from 14.65 percent. During the same timeframe, Apple's Safari browser has increased its share to 6.31 percent from 4.71 percent. Much of that increase in usage is apparently due to soaring sales of Apple Mac computers, which ship with the browser, claimed Net Applications.

   Related Links

   http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html