New data showing an increase in Chinese web users has hit Firefox's global share of the browser market.
Net Applications uses data from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to weight its browser data. The latest statistics show the number of Chinese web users has increased, bumping down the share of global users from the US, UK and Europe.
"All of our global usage share reports are weighted based on CIA data on how many internet users per country there are," the analytics firm said. "For example, we have more data on the US than China so we weight the Chinese data proportionaly higher according to the research provided by the CIA."
Global share of web users:
1) China - 21.39%
2) USA - 13.47%
3) Japan - 5.45%
4) Brazil - 4.18%
5) Germany - 3.58%
6) India - 3.37%
7) UK - 2.83%
8) France - 2.49%
9) Nigeria - 2.42%
10) Russia - 2.25%
Firefox is the loser under the new global weightings, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer is showing its global reach.
In January, Firefox's share of the global browser market was 22.75%. After the adjustment last month, it slid to 21.74%. IE rose from 56% to 56.77%, while Chrome continued its ascent, moving from 10.7% to 10.93%.
"Firefox loses global share since many of the countries it is most popular in (Western European, in particular) now have a lower percentage of global internet users," Net Applications said. "Internet Explorer gains as browser usage shifts to countries with higher percentages of Internet Explorer users."
The data merely shows that Firefox's good standing in Europe has led to its global share being over-reported, not that it's lost users anywhere.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
