China is the second largest country in the world, counting Internet users, and its 160 million Internet surfers are expected to grow fast and most likely climb above USA before the end of the year. At the same time, China is one of Microsoft’s best markets, where 80% of the market is held by Internet Explorer. According to Mozilla’s own estimates, there are about 2% steady Firefox users in China and this is largely due to the poor support for the browser with native websites. Mozilla has actively started to get new contacts and partners in China to improve support for Firefox, and the goal is 5% of the market as soon as possible.
A great step in the right direction but still far from 19.65% Firefox has in the USA. Firefox is Open Source, but because of the massive piracy going on in China, the free alternative has gotten very little attention. Something Mozilla is trying to work around.
“Bill Xu, founder of the ZEUUX Free Software Community, a Beijing group that promotes open source, points out that for Firefox to succeed in China, it shouldn’t compete on cost but by stressing its security features. “IE isn’t very secure. It’s plagued with a lot of add-ons, malware, and viruses. Firefox is more secure, and that’s the main reason a lot of users choose it,” he says.”
