Could Firefox Quantum revive the Mozilla browser?
In May 2016, the Net Applications barometer announced that Google Chrome was the new market leader in desktop browsers. Google's browser had ended the reign of nearly two decades of Internet Explorer (IE) who has benefited from its privileged position on Windows. Google Chrome has continued to widen the gap since then, leaving far behind a browser like Firefox, in a ranking where the second place is still occupied by IE.
At the release of Firefox Quantum last November, we saw a brand new Firefox that is now considered the equal if not much better than Google Chrome, in terms of performance and in terms of memory usage. Tests have shown that Firefox was faster than Chrome. Other tests have also shown that with the multi-process architecture, Firefox consumes 30% less RAM than Google's browser. This performance has been made possible by an all-new rendering engine designed to take full advantage of the processing power in modern devices.
In addition to the performance side, the user interface has been rebuilt in Firefox Quantum thanks to the Photon project. The Firefox UI has become clearer and more modern. Add to that all the ever-improved privacy features that Mozilla has always wanted to distinguish from the competition. So will Firefox Quantum allow Mozilla to regain ground in the desktop OS market? This is what some people have probably said.
If six or seven months after the release of Firefox Quantum, it's a bit too early to see a significant positive change in Firefox's market share, what Net Applications reveals in early June is rather disappointing for fans of the Mozilla browser. Instead of going back, Firefox has fallen below the 10% market share mark at the end of May. Firefox went from 10.17% shares in April to 9.92% in late May, a drop of 0.25 percentage points.
All major browsers, except Google, lost ground in May
Google, the market leader went from 61.69% to 62.85% share in one month. With this rise of 1.16 points, Google is conquering two-thirds of market share. Like Mozilla's browser, all other major desktop Web browsers have lost ground. Internet Explorer, in second place, went from 12.30% to 11.82% in one month, a decline of 0.48 percentage points. Microsoft Edge also lost 0.19 percentage points from 4.45% to 4.26% in one month. Ditto for Safari. Apple's browser lost 0.28 points from 3.99% at the end of April to 3.71% at the end of May.
Net Applications: Statistics for the month of May 2018
Source : Net Applications
