Despite the fact that Firefox 2.0 was only released last month, Mozilla is to release the new version of its browser as early as next year.
The rival to Microsoft's Internet Explorer has increased its share of the browser market since the release of Firefox 2.0 to nearly 11% in the US, 22% in the UK, and an average of 23.2% across Europe.
While Firefox 2.0 has been successful, with an average of 500,000 downloads every day since its release, it wasn't the radical overhaul of its predecessor which some were expecting, with its anti-phishing software the main improvement.
The next version of its browser has been in development for a year now, and is planned to be a more comprehensive update.
Firefox boss Tristan Nitot said that Firefox 3.0 will take advantage of the latest built-in computing power to allow it to 'render' web pages more quickly. Firefox 3.0 is now available for beta testing.
Microsoft's IE7, despite early predictions of incompatibility with some websites, has performed well and was generally welcomed as a much-needed improvement to IE6.
However, if a new and improved version of Firefox is released next year, Microsoft may be forced to speed up development of the next version of Internet Explorer, to avoid losing more of its browser market share.
Graham Charlton is Editor at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin or Google+.
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The Technology Adoption Statistics documents are part of Econsultancy's Internet Statistics Compendium package, a comprehensive compilation of internet statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures that are ideal for presentations, business cases or client pitches, RFPs and understanding the marketplace as a whole.
10:46PM on 5th June 2007
I have just downloaded another copy of Firefox and luckilyhad the forsight to set the firewall to block ICQ which I do not want.
How you have gotten tangled with that load of rubbish I do not know,but Firefox will not open because it cannot connect to start ICQ . How can I persuade it to open on it's own ?
From what I have seen it is far superior and We like the way it works, fast and reliable.
It has taken several sessions to get this far as ICQ does not seem to realise that not every one is in love with it.
If they cannot be split apart you will lose 2 customers immediately, a tiny drop in a big ocean but don't we get any say in what we use on the net ?
Kind regards,
Dave Long