After rapidly growing to around 30% during 2006, the number of pcworld.co.nz visitors using Firefox seems to have plateaued over the past six months. Last week, Nielsen Net//Ratings clocked 62.53% of our unique browsers using some version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (steady from 62.8% during November 06). Mozilla Firefox users, meanwhile, hold a total 32.8% share (up 2% over November).

Firefoxers are easily the most active upgraders, with almost all having upgraded to Firefox 2 (see full chart below) while the ranks of Microsofties are dominated by laggards still on IE 6.

Browser: % of unique visitors to pcworld.co.nz (July 9-15, 2007)
Internet Explorer 6.0: 32.88%
Mozilla Firefox 2.0: 30.17%
Internet Explorer 7.0: 28.92%
Opera 9.2: 2.20%
Mozilla Firefox 1.5: 1.54%
Safari: 1.25%
Mozilla Firefox 1.0%
Netscape 5.0: 0.44%
Internet Explorer 5.0: 0.40%
Internet Explorer 5.5: 0.33%
Source: Nielsen Net//Ratings

Apple's Safari has miniscule share (mirroring its worldwide stats), but it will be interesting to see if it climbs now that its first Windows version is in beta (install a copy from PC World August's cover disc, on newsstands July 30).

The latest stats out of Europe show Firefox rising to a healthy 27% market share in Europe for July (up 3.6% since March) versus Microsoft's IE is on 66.5%. The keenest Firefoxers include Germany (38%), Ireland (38.6%), Poland (39.6%) and Finland (47.9%)

Yanks are proving slower to catch on. Firefox's North American market share was pegged at 18.7% for July (according to XiTiMonitor, the French measuring company that also supplied the above European figures). Still, it's a much healthier situation than a couple of years back when IE's dominance went almost totally unchallenged (and, not uncoincidentally, IE users had to wait half a decade between major upgrades).