When Version 1.0 of Firefox was released last November (see "Mozilla launches Firefox 1.0 browser"), it caused a sensation as a seemingly more secure and more feature-rich alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous Internet Explorer, which for years had held a market share north of 90% -- and which Microsoft had barely bothered to improve.
Since then, Firefox has achieved what no other browser had accomplished in years: It attained a significant market share at Internet Explorer's expense. Firefox now holds a market share of between 7% and 9%, according to various market research estimates.
But as Firefox nears its first birthday, its maker, The Mozilla Foundation, faces significant challenges, analysts said. These include quickly discovering and fixing security vulnerabilities, competing against an upcoming Internet Explorer upgrade and broadening Firefox's user base beyond its core of technically savvy users.
The stream of Firefox security vulnerabilities uncovered in recent months is par for the course for a young software product (see "Symantec report sparks safe-browser debate"). But it may disappoint users who switched to Firefox expecting it to be immune to security holes.
While the myth of Firefox as a totally secure browser is gone, Microsoft is upgrading Internet Explorer to try to close the features gap that attracted users to Firefox (see "RSA: Gates promises new version of IE by mid-year"). Internet Explorer 7 is now in a beta phase, meaning that Mozilla must keep its browser one step ahead of Internet Explorer in features and innovation.
Finally, although Mozilla says that Firefox has anywhere between 40 million and 50 million active users, it needs to appeal to a more mainstream audience as well as to corporate IT departments to give its usage growth a boost, analysts said.
Mozilla isn't keeping still. The first major Firefox upgrade, code-named Deer Park and known as Version 1.5, is now in beta-testing and is slated for general availability by November or December (see "Firefox 1.5 beta released"). The new features in Firefox 1.5 are useful and convenient but not earth-shattering, and the coming months will be critical for it to hold on to its user base and remain a viable alternative to Internet Explorer, according to analysts.
"Firefox 1.5 features improvements that are necessary and valuable but not necessarily compelling. It will not re-energize the usage growth, which is going through a natural slowing down that happens with maturity," said Ray Valdes, a Gartner Inc. analyst.
Firefox 1.5 features better usability, performance, extensibility, security and privacy, as well as faster Web navigation due to advanced caching and prerendering of content, said Chris Beard, head of products and marketing at Mozilla Corp. Mozilla Corp. is the subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that is charged with developing, marketing and distributing Mozilla products.
The product's tabbed browsing feature has also been improved, allowing users to rearrange pages by dragging and dropping them, Beard said.
In terms of security and privacy, the biggest improvement is an automated update feature to make it easy for users to keep the browser current with the latest improvements and patches available, Beard said. With the current version, users have to download the entire browser to get updates. With Firefox 1.5, users will be able to simply download patches, making the process faster, he said.
The updates will be downloaded in the background, so as to not interfere with Web browsing, and users will be prompted to install them once the download is complete, Beard said. Moreover, the automated update feature also will take into account add-ins a user has installed, to ensure compatibility between the browser updates and the extensions, he said.
"We're delivering a software update capability that is holistic, that takes into account how people use Firefox," Beard said. "This feature is one of the most significant enhancements. It has been a pain point for Firefox users, and we believe we've delivered a solution that will let people stay current."
Microsoft, however, is reacting to the challenge by improving Internet Explorer. "The real question is, how well will Firefox fare against a reinvigorated IE?" said Michael Gartenberg, a JupiterResearch analyst. "For many users, IE 7 will address some of the key reasons why they may have looked at Firefox, such as security or new features [not in Internet Explorer.]"
In the excitement around its launch last year, Firefox was unreasonably portrayed by some as having unbreakable security. But vulnerabilities found in recent months are injecting a dose of reality into that myth, analysts said.
Users who adopted Firefox hoping never having to patch it are disappointed, which in turn is slowing its growth, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at The Enderle Group. "Firefox has had some visible growing pains," he said. "As the product grows up, you face reality ... and the massive interest has dropped off."
In the face of unavoidable security holes, the important thing is for Mozilla to react quickly with fixes, analysts said. "What the market has learned is that there are going to be vulnerabilities on any platform and that switching from one browser to another is not going to be a panacea," Gartenberg said.
That's why the automated update feature in Firefox 1.5 is particularly important, said Eric Peterson, a JupiterResearch analyst. "It's the kind of functionality they should have. They need to be ready to quickly address any kind of hacker threat to the application," Peterson said. "If they're making it fairly transparent to the user, that's great news. In retrospect, it's probably something they should have built in with the 1.0 release."
As for how responsive Mozilla has been in patching security holes, opinions are mixed. Gartenberg and Valdes both give Mozilla high marks, but others are less impressed. "Putting in place an automated update mechanism doesn't really get you anything unless there are updates to feed through it. What we've seen with some of the first security problems in Firefox is that their speed of getting to market with an update is the bigger factor," said Nate Root, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst.
As Mozilla continues to improve Firefox, it needs to place more attention on quality assurance, because the browser is developed by a community of open-source volunteers, Root said. Particular stringency needs to be applied to reviewing the hundreds of add-ins available for the browser, some of which have been sources of security vulnerabilities, he added.
Then there's the issue of keeping the momentum going, which involves appealing to new users. Early adopters are mostly technically savvy people comfortable with open-source software and eager to take advantage of Firefox's extensible architecture to customize it, analysts said. "One could argue they're getting [close] to saturating that portion of the market of technically adept users," said Valdes.
To appeal to mainstream users, Firefox needs to stay a step ahead of Microsoft in features and innovation. Even so, some analysts don't see a massive migration from Internet Explorer to Firefox anytime soon.
"IE works perfectly fine for the vast majority of consumer, mainstream users," Gartenberg said. "I don't think we'll see massive mainstream consumers opting to use Firefox."
As for the enterprise market, Mozilla officials acknowledge that for now, their focus remains on individual users -- not on making the browser attractive for IT departments that may in turn roll it out to their corporate users.
That needs to change, said Valdes. "If they want to keep growing their usage base, they need to address the needs of different sectors of the user population, including corporate users," he said.
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