Mac And FireFox Internet Shares Hit New High

New research data released today from Net Applications has revealed both Apple and Mozilla are gaining ground and bringing Microsoft's share of the web to historic lows.

Net Applications provides statistical data including monthly information on key statistics such as browser trends (e.g. Internet Explorer vs. Firefox market share), search engine referral data (e.g. Yahoo vs. MSN vs. Google traffic market share) and operating system share (Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux market share or even the iPhone market share vs. Windows Mobile).

The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month. The information published is an aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics. The site unique visitor and referral information is summarized on a monthly basis.

Firefox Share Tops 20% for November

For the first time since Net Applications began tracking, the Firefox browser has exceeded 20% share for a full month. Mozilla's CEO, John Lilly, gives credit to the Mozilla community and shared his thoughts with Net Applications on this accomplishment:

"Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla. It's a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible. The open web is more vibrant than ever, and the thousands of Mozilla contributors around the world have played a major role in making it that way."

According to Net Applications Firefox's share jumped about eight tenths of a percent in November, which is much higher than average. Why the big jump? In addition to the steady gains Firefox has shown over the years, their analysis shows three other major reasons:

1. The U.S. election. Firefox usage share increased significantly in the days surrounding November 4th (especially in some non-U.S. countries, like Japan), then held roughly steady until:
2. The Thanksgiving holiday. Firefox share jumped starting on Wednesday the 26th until the end of the month.
3. Extra weekend days. The average 30-day month has 8.57 weekend days. November had 10.

All three reasons increase Firefox share since Firefox has a much larger residential share than corporate share (to be detailed in a future analysis). So, all the above factors led to increased residential browsing and a higher Firefox share.

Mac Nears 9% Market Share, Windows Falls Below 90%

Mac and the iPhone hit record numbers according the November Net Applications Web survey, at the same time Microsoft’s Web presence dropped below 90% for the first time.

The Mac’s share of Web hits grew approximately 8.04% in November to a record 8.87%, while the iPhone’s gains were up sharper by 12.12% to 0.37%. Linux grew even faster for the month, up nearly 16.9% to 0.83%. The Linux market share had dropped nearly 25% from its high in Aug '08 of 0.93%.

While the numbers show Microsoft still has a rather large market share the trending graph shows some positive results for Apple as both the Mac and iPhone's market share shows steady growth throughout the year.

One other point of interest on the graph is the "other" category, which shows a steady increase and a new high at 0.26%. It is unclear at to what OS might fit into "other" but any cuts into the armor of Microsoft can be seen as a positive for Apple and Linux lovers