Firefox achieves 10 percent market share

Mozilla's Firefox has managed to grab over 10 percent of the Web browser marker with its highest percentage to date, according to Web analytics firm OneStat.com on Tuesday.

The company said that Mozilla's browser now has a global market share of 11.5 percent, an increase of 2.8 percentage points since April. Some of this growth is at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has declined by 1.2 percentage points since April, to a market share of 85.5 percent.

The popularity of Firefox varies across the world, with a market share of 14.1 percent in the US, but only 4.9 percent in the UK, according to OneStat. Its figures are based on a sample of two million Web users worldwide.

[? /*CMS poll(20003908) */ ?]But other companies have noticed a decline in Firefox over recent months. Last month, Web applications provider NetApplications reported that the open source browser's share of the market dropped by 0.7 percentage points from August to September.

Although this wasn't the first time that Firefox' share has dropped, RedMonk analyst James Governor said he believes the overall trend for Firefox is upwards.

"The notion that this is the end of the road for Firefox is completely absurd. Any turbulence in the growth path is a temporary thing," said Governor.