Yesterday Mozilla released version 14 of the Firefox web browser. With a range of new functionality and fixes, including HTTPS support for Google searches and full screen support for Mac OS X Lion, there’s a lot to like about the latest Firefox version.
It’s no secret that Firefox has fallen behind Google Chrome in the usage statistics. We took a close look at the browser wars recently, and according to the latest figures for July, Chrome gets 33.8% worldwide, Internet Explorer 31.83%, and Firefox 23.9%.
But that’s worldwide. Could it be that Firefox is still in a leading position in parts of the world?
Countries where Firefox still dominates 50%
To answer this question of where in the world Firefox still has a dominating position, we amassed the figures for the month of June 2012 from Statcounter and ranked all the countries based on Firefox usage. We excluded countries with less than 100,000 Statcounter sample size.
In this chart, you can see all the countries where Firefox has more than 50% usage share based on the June numbers:
As you can see, Cuba is the country where Firefox enjoys the highest relative usage anywhere in the world. Perhaps that’s not too surprising since Cuba is also a stronghold for Linux.
On the list you find some countries with large populations, including Indonesia with around 242 million people, Bangladesh with 150 million, and Ethiopia with 85 million. These countries may not have the same Internet penetration as other parts of the world, but combined the countries on our list represent approximately 683 million people. That is close to 10% of the world population.
Will version 14 help Firefox get back?
We must say that there is a lot of nostalgia surrounding Firefox, but, unfortunately, it’s not been in the headlines for all the right reasons recently. There’s falling usage numbers, controversy over the rapid-release scheme, and more.
But Firefox is still arguably a good web browser and one that is used by millions of users all around the world. That it still dominates in these particular countries matter less than whether Mozilla can manage to claw its way back in the statistics.
What do you think – are Firefox’s best days behind it, or is there a chance that version 14 will help it get back some of what it has lost?
