The Mozilla Corporation CEO has announced on her BLOG that Mozilla Thunderbird will be split into a “new, separate organizational setting”. The details of which have not been decided on yet, although she has outlined three different options. One thing is a fact strategically this bodes well for both Firefox and Thunderbird projects.
Given the June 2007 browser statistics (thecounter.com) Internet Explorer 6 is at 54%, IE7 is at 16%, Firefox is 12% (28% usage in Europe!), Netscape is at 11% (based on Firefox), and Safari is at 3%. Given the statistics above the only real targets for Firefox to grow in market share are to take away from IE6, and IE7 user base. By being able to forget about Thunderbird and concentrate on Firefox it should be easy for them to achieve at least a 30% global usage.
The Windows browser wars have heated up again, with the entry of Safari into the browser market, which is currently available as a public beta. This gives Mozilla another contender to worry about. This Apple release actually caught me totally off guard, for a while I pondered why Apple would release Safari for Windows, as they have little chance of any real chance of denting Firefox or Internet Explorer usage. But after the first Safari updater window opened I understood, they wanted to trick me into installing iTunes and Quicktime. But I’ll definitely be keeping it installed for cross browser capability web page testing.
Maybe if we are lucky this new Thunderbird foundation just maybe fix the bug with the new message indicator constantly displaying when no new messages have arrived (clicking on the drafts folder makes it disappear). They could also seriously compete with Outlook if they came out with a central mailbox system, adding shared contacts, and listening to the business user feedback. I’ll definitely be watching both projects for the ramifications.
Comments
Tag:
