Firefox triumphs among browsers and iPad rises to mobile devices market domination

The summary of trends on the internet markets covered by the gemiusRanking services comprised in the new report published by Gemius shows the last six months as the time of significant reshuffles. This period saw the victory of Mozilla Firefox over MSIE, and the first data illustration of the former’s new publishing cycle. With the tendencies observed on the mobile operation systems market, we may expect to see an interesting struggle in the ensuing months. In the nearest future, we may well witness a spectacular success of the iPad.

In April 2011 the long-lasting struggle between Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers ended with the triumph of the latter, which since then has been No. 1 on the browsers market in the countries covered by gemiusRanking services (Bulgaria, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine and the MENA region). The loss of the present No. 2 in the ranking, MSIE, translates into the growth of Chrome, which has been gaining momentum since the beginning of the year. This fluctuation may be one of the reasons for Firefox’s long-awaited triumph.

Graph 1. The percentage share of page views made with the most popular browsers groups (all versions) in the countries included in gemiusRanking

Source: Gemius, gemiusTraffic, 01.2011 – 06.2011

Yet another factor contributing to the present situation on the browsers market may be the implementation of the new publishing cycle by the Mozilla foundation, which is to speed up launching new versions of the Firefox product. Most probably the range of Firefox versions will soon experience a similar situation to the one observed in the case of consecutive Chrome versions, i.e. prompt replacement on the leader position by the latest versions of the browser.

The hottest 2010 premiere, the iPad, had a visible impact on the situation on the market of mobile devices. Following the launch of the second version of the device in March 2011, the tablet is rapidly gaining ground. The share of iPad-generated page views has increased by nearly 17 percentage points since June 2010, when it came 3rd in the ranking. Closing the top 3 as recently as year ago, it presently lacks only 0.46 percentage points to the leading iPhone.

Graph 2. Percentage share of page views made with the most popular mobile devices (models) in the countries included in gemiusRanking

Source: Gemius, gemiusTraffic, 01.2011–06.2011

The rest of 2011 will certainly see the dominance of Apple products on the discussed markets, as Nokia’s share is gradually shrinking (a drop by almost 2.5 percentage points since June 2010).

The data comprised in the “H1 2011 trends on the internet market” mini-report is taken from the gemiusRanking websites presenting current information on tools used by internet users in web browsing. The data shown is a detailed and up-to-date illustration of the internet users preferences as far as for example browsers, operating systems, mobile devices or search engines are concerned. Currently, there are thirteen gemiusRanking sites, updated weekly with the latest results of the gemiusTraffic study, a leading European web analytics research based on the cookie technology.