Mozilla Firefox has achieved a market share of over 20 percent in Europe, according to the latest figures released by French Web metrics firm XiTi. XiTi, which based its figures on a sample of 32.5 million Web site visits that took place on Sunday 8 January, said that Finland has the highest proportion of Firefox users, followed by Slovenia and Germany. It found that the open source browser is used by 38, 36 and 30 percent of users in these countries respectively.
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Here's a link to the aricle of the company : http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement13.asp It's in french but includes color-coded maps for Europe and the world.
Caveat : "Il est important de noter que ce classement a été mesuré lors d'un dimanche. Néanmoins, la dernière analyse de cette étude, en bas de page, démontre que l'écart d'utilisation de Firefox entre le week-end et la semaine est désormais quasi nul." (It is important to note the measurement was done on a sunday. However the latest analysis shows the difference in usage of Firefox between the weekend and weekdays to be quasi zero.)
Edited 2006-01-17 14:56
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.. are seriously behind. I sould be ashamed of myself. but the reason is fairly logica: Here, much more people have access to the internet, so it's less like a "geek thing", and more a mass consumption thing. Everyone has a broadband connection here. So this means that more unknowing and ingnorant people surf the internet than in surrounding countries.
Edited 2006-01-17 15:52
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Well, not really. The Scandinavian countries have a much higher broadband-penetration than we Dutch (no link atm, sorry), yet they have a much higher figure of Firefox users.
The problem lies in our nature. Dutch people are inherently ordinary, they don't want to stand out. As such, they are less inclined to deviate from the mean (Windows + IE +Office, in this case) than people in other countries. In The Netherlands, people expect you to do as everyone else. Which means 2.2 kids, Opel Astra 1.4, and of course Dancing With The Stars and Idols.
Hey don't look at me.
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Well, not really. The Scandinavian countries have a much higher broadband-penetration than we Dutch (no link atm, sorry), yet they have a much higher figure of Firefox users.
Please check your facts, because this is not true. Look here:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0504/broadband_europe_634x480...
All top 4 countries have low firefox figures!
But you're still correct, we Dutch are ordinary 
Edited 2006-01-17 16:55
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30% in Germany, and only 10 in Holland? Interesting how that came to be. Although I admit there's a lot of reluctance to switch ANY kind of programs for a LOT of people/organisations here.
Also interesting that Europe not only has more Firefox usage, it also had more Amiga and BeOS usage back in the day.
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I'm happy that my own country Australia is on 18.6% almost at the same level as Europe. It's not often we do well on these sort of things. But I think I've managed to convert almost all of my non-technical friends to it, it's pretty easy to market: small download, blocks pop-ups and helps you avoid spyware 
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I am pretty impressed by greece. It is actually more than france! I kind of liked somebodys interpretation that the figures are lower when the internet penetration is higher (more ignorant people browse) but this does not explain germany's 30%. It is kind of fun to think of it as a measure of anti-american or pro-EU feelings of each country. Therefore Germany scores high and France (who recently rejected the EU consitution) scores lower. That explains the Spanish, GB and Dutch results too. Also the romantic and economically dependent greece scores unexpectedly high. Of course you cannot take this really seriously but it is kind of amusing. What do you guys think?
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Oh well, I wouldn't say the french are anti-european (there were many reasons for which the constitution was refused) and certainly not pro-american... they're french after all :-) Anyway these days there isn't any western european country where the population isn't vastly anti-american (in the sense that they are opposed to the current administration). Now to stop using my mac because it was designed by americans, that would be quite dumb.
International politics have probably little to do with the choice of one's browser. But I do think some countries have a mind that's more into "group projects" than others. Nordic countries and germany obviously are. Just look at projects like KDE. It seems half the developers are in Germany and another quarter in Scandinavia.
Hm... I see a pattern: BEER !
But how could this explain the Dutch thing...
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Everyone I know tells their customers to use firefox because of security, extensions but mostly because "it's better". That's what most users will remember. So unless IE7 actually brings something that Firefox doesn't have not many people are going to switch back. If IE7 offers a simple way to write plugins maybe it has a chance to reverse the motion.
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Well, permanent, in terms of 'IE getting killed" - I don't see that happening, in regards to the IE vs. Firefox war.
What I see is this; IE will continue improving, not because of the Firefox thread directly, but the fact is, Microsoft will be delivering services - if Firefox grows larger, then they'll have to create the services based on openstandards, which would then basically cripple any chances of maintaining their monopoly both on the desktop, and services over the internet.
As long as Firefox exists, it'll be there to keep 'Microsoft honest' - but at the same time, I don't want to see Firefox get too comfortable, or otherwise we'll see the days of Netscape Communicator return with crap stability, memory leaks and security issues.
Edited 2006-01-18 05:05
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But XiTi's figures should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, as Firefox usage tends to be highest over the weekend, according to Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe.
If you want more reliable data, track trends over a longer period and increase the sample size to include a broader range of websites. Otherwise, there's just no way to verify the results. In my opinion, FireFox has no greater than 10% market share anywhere. But that's just my opinion.