European web metrics company Xiti has published browser marketshare statistics for March. The data collected by Xiti indicates that the open source Firefox web browser has climbed to almost 29 percent marketshare in Europe, where it is still steadily increasing in popularity. This is no small accomplishment.

The European country that saw the most growth was Andorra, where Firefox marketshare rose from 22.7 percent in February to 24.8 percent in March. The three countries with the highest Firefox marketshare are Finland, Poland, and Slovenia, which all have between 43 and 46 percent. Notably, the study saw the average marketshare exceed 30 percent during weekends, mostly likely because of people who are using Internet Explorer at work and Firefox at home, by choice.

According to Xiti, Internet Explorer has lost 2.5 percentage points during the past six months. Opera and Safari have also seen slight gains during that time period to 3.3 and 2.3 percent, respectively. Xiti does not provide statistics for iPhone browser marketshare and the report does not specify whether or not iPhone browsing is counted as part of the Safari statistics.

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