At the beginning of the year, Firefox was used by 9.6% of all Internet users.  By the end of 2006, Firefox was used by 14% of Internet users, which is a 50% increase in one year.  Despite releasing a new version of Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft took a hit in the browser market this past year.  Internet Explorer marketshare dropped from 85.1% to 79.6%.

Apple Computer Inc.’s Safari browser jumped from 3.1% to 4.2%.  Opera Web browser grew from 0.6% to 0.9%.  Lastly, AOL LLC’s Netscape dropped from 1.24% to 0.9%.

In October, Firefox Version 2.0 was released and since then Firefox users have been continuously growing.  I believe that part of Firefox’s growth is also responsible for Internet Explorer’s application slower load time.  I noticed that Internet Explorer 7.0 was exceptionally slower than Firefox.  However, the new build of Internet Explorer definetely has catered to users that prefer tabbed browsing.  For PC/Mac users that have 2.0 GHz+ processors, I believe that the application load time difference between IE and Firefox may not be as noticeable.

[Source: Computerworld]