iPhones and Wii’s – Firefox’s Real Competitor

The Firefox community widely regards Internet Explorer as ‘the competition’.  This is kind of innacurate – Internet Explorer’s marketshare is more like ‘the goal’.  Calling it ‘the competition’ is like me calling Ashton Kutcher ’the competition’ for Demi Moore’s affections.  He’s already won, leaving me and every other straight guy with a taste for milfs to fight over the sloppy seconds.

 The real competitors for the sloppy seconds of the market is a fight between Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Safari’s marketshare doesn’t move much – it’s specific to Apple computers and there’s alternate browsers that are reportedly, depending on which report you read, better.

But Apple’s got 3 million new Safari-only devices hitting the market on June 29, and they expect to have 10 million iPhones out in the wild some time in 2008.

According to May’s browser stats at TheCounter Firefox was detected on nearly 9.3 million computers, while Safari was found on only 2.3 million.

Factor in the 3 million iPhones Apple is almost certain to sell due to an endless viral campaign that’s hyped up every tiny feature, and those numbers inch closer together.

Opera meanwhile have got themselves embedded on every Nintendo Wii and DS’s, which is craploads of units, and they’re finding themselves selected to be embedded on loads of other devices.  It helps a lot that their browser is cross-platform and light on resources, and it makes them the obvious choice when it comes to a resource-limited environment.

So we’ve essentially got:

• Safari being pimped on every iPhone, with 3 million ready to sell and 10 million expected in 2008
• Opera being pimped on Nintendo’s Wii and DS units, which are capturing (or in the DS’s case captured) the console / portable game markets
• Spread Firefox, the communal ad agency of Firefox, with no new angles and no new stories.

By the end of this year the numbers for Firefox, Opera and Safari are going to look pretty similar.  It’s feasible for either Safari or Opera to overtake Firefox due to the excellent marketing and strategic placement they’ve fostered.