Firefox Download Day: The Numbers Across The Arab Region.
“And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.”
-from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
Firefox download day (18th June) was a huge success all over the world. up till about 10 PM Jordan Local Time, a record breaking 8,490,451 copies of Firefox 3 were download worldwide in a single day.
Naturally the U.S lead the pack with around 2,617,307 downloads, followed by Germany with 703,813 downloads, Spain: 304,225 downloads, U.K: 303,236, France: 297,022, and Iran with 260,415 downloads. (Imagine that, Iran at number 6 worldwide, who would’ve known).
The numbers across the Arab world however, were not too encouraging, the most downloads in the Arab world were in Saudi Arabia with 8,326 downloads, followed by the U.A.E with 6,890 downloads, Egypt: 6,001 downloads, Morocco: 4,707 downloads, Algeria: 3,345 downloads, Tunisia: 3,903 downloads, Kuwait: 2,226 downloads, Qatar: 1,509 downloads and Jordan with 1,469. The rest of the Arab countries’ numbers are too trivial to mention.
Now, if we add up the numbers for the top Arab countries mentioned above, they sum up to 38,375 downloads, which frankly is quite disappointing, considering the fact that Israel alone scored about 33,250 downloads. and if you take into account the number of internet users in the Arab world combined compared to Israel… well, you do the math. And to add insult to injury, lets not forget Iran, the country with the 6th most downloads worldwide. we Arabs are way behind, or so it seems.
I am not sure really what to make of this, I imagined there’d be more Firefox supporters in the Arab world, especially in Jordan, but apparently, there aren’t. which is quite sad if you think about it, because if this tells us something, its that the overwhelming majority of Internet users in Jordan, and indeed the Arab world, just don’t care! dare I say even “tech un-aware”.
And I’ll tell you why…
According to This report there are 796,900 Internet users in Jordan as of September 07. Now, to have only 1,360 out of 796,900 care enough to download Firefox is just pathetic. Now, I know that more people will probably download Firefox in the upcoming days, and surely the number of Firefox users in the Jordan in particular and the Arab region in general is much larger, but still this gives us an indication, and something to ponder upon.
- As mentioned, The Numbers above were taken at 10 PM Local Jordan Time, which marks the end time for the download day. statistics from this page. Numbers now have changed and differed and are much higher but will not count for inclusion in the Guinness book of world records.
On a side note: I did download Firefox 3, But I’m not gonna use it yet, I’m sticking with FF 2 for now, since the majority of my favourite FF plugins (and indeed most FF plugins) are not yet FF 3 compatible.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:25 am
This is no surprise my dear, and it has two indications:
1) It shows the cultural gap between us the criminal Zionists in Occupied Palestinian territories.
2) The good news(good at least to me, good is a very relative term my friend) is in the rising nation of Iran.
but “us” ?? we are in the whore hole of civilization.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Well,
most of internet users in Jordan are Internet Cafe customers. then, the Persians are way more proud of their country than arabs are. So, may be they just downloaded it multiple times just to make a name for themselves.
in regard to plug ins, all mine worked fine except for google’s text to phone.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:32 am
In Jordan they still prefer IE,
In companies and internet cafes all use IE , as to my blog
90% of my blog users using IE(6 &7)
thought 70% of my blog visitors from Jordan
So I guess its one of the reason no much downland
June 19th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I downloaded to 5 machines, I demand that my numbers be added to Jordan!
June 19th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
I expected a much larger number of downloads from Jordan.
Anyways, I do not think Jordanians prefer IE and they have not downloaded Firefox for this reason. The main problem, in my opinion, is that most of Jordanians started surfing the net using IE, most of them did not try other browsers and nearly all Jordanians use Windows (i.e. IE is the default browser of Windows).
Another point, suppose a ‘IE Download Day’ is announced. How many Jordanians will download IE in 24 hours???
(Btw, I created a Jordanian FF Facebook group, join us if you’re a fan of Firefox)
June 19th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
that quote from the book of mozilla is old :-) .. but i am not sure i like the latest one as much.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
how come?
I’ve asked all my friends to download it…only one did…
anyway the I was expecting such thing. In countries such Kuwait and UAE a lot of people are switching to Apple OS so the number of FF3 downloads are expected to be law. Another thing is that Arab users don’t know anything about such OpenSource, Freeware or anti-Microsoft communities worldwide. So, its a matter of trust we use IE at home, work, school and it comes ‘as a default with every f*ck*n Windows OS and it sometimes causes a problem conflicting with other Internet browsers. Thats why (we) tend to use it less than others..
June 19th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
IE rocks!!! I’m speaking of version 6 and down of course.
control+tab my friends, firefox just can’t do it. For some reason they left this feature out of the new IE.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
well, Iranians really like firefox, come on you don’t think people would multiple download just to increase numbers?
June 20th, 2008 at 6:59 am
I’ve been also using Firefox for a couple of months and I can say that it has good features.
Hopefully Firefox could set a world record for Guinness. :)
June 20th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I installed it, only to uninstall it right away, 4 og my 5 plugins wasen’t supported, AND google toolbar isen’t supported either ??????
June 21st, 2008 at 7:09 am
I knew there was a reason I was putting off the download. I need my plugins! All of them! Every single one! Seriously, though, I’d be lost without the little shortcuts that make Firefox so great.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:03 am
Wow !!, the Firefox madness don’t stop.
Lets kill bill’s browser (-:
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm
yeah the plugin, that’s my favourite
June 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Wow! I guess IE is done for huh? In some time, I guess total market domination will be by Mozilla.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I Loved the new Firefox
i dont know how could people hate it?
June 28th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
The new firefox rocks…IE is definitely done for!
June 29th, 2008 at 10:28 am
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 am
Love the new firefox…I don’t know what I’d do if I was stuck with IE
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
I donwloaded the new firefox but since then I am having trouble keeping it up and running. Everyday the browser closes down at least 5 times … hmmmm I am just wondering why ..
Another thing that crossed my mind; anybody knows about the internet penetration in the arab world ?
July 6th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Firefox kicks IE’s butt bigtime and I’m one of the 1469 that downloaded it here in Jordan and I’m not even Jordanian.
July 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
i think Firefox is much better.. and more secure.. and thats the important thing.. at least its not from microsoft loool…
July 7th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Yes i agree. So in my opinion Firefox is best of browsing.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
[…] Firefox Download Day: The Numbers Across The Arab Region. | Bakkouz […]
July 12th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Firefox 3 proved to be the fastest internet browser ever. I love it.
July 13th, 2008 at 9:40 am
looooooool
walaaaaaa hu bhaldeereh bakkouz… 6ale3 re7leh
2lf mabrook walak ya 27la 3areees
July 13th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Well, thats amazing. Firefox rocks! I think FF is better and easier than IE to work with. Detail info you’ve collected btw!!
July 14th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I think IE is over! Firefox is gonna rock the world!
July 15th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Hoorah for firefox! It is the best browser ever!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I love Firefox, its made my internet life a joy since I used to use good old slow frustrating Internet Explorer! I’d reccomend it to everyone!
July 16th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
there is a words, “human smart not use IE”
July 17th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I’m with you… Sticking with FF2 until the plug-ins catch up with the newest release.
I’ve been playing around with Flock a lot lately, too. It’s built on the Mozilla platform, but it’s “optimized” for the whole web 2.0/social scene. It has some potential.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I am using Firefox
July 19th, 2008 at 4:59 am
neutron What do you mean when you say ctrl+tab doesn’t work in FF, it scrolls through all open tabs on mine… what does your IE do when you hit that shortcut?
July 21st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I love Firefox, its made my internet life a joy since I used to use good old slow frustrating Internet Explorer! I’d reccomend it to everyone!
July 29th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Microsoft Internet Explorer keeps Crashing on you? Loosing all your hard work on the computer after many hours of typing? Problem: Microsoft internet explorer has alot of coding errors in it, alot of the software programming is not compatible with some web pages.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Very useful piece of information indeed! A thorough research is very significant before stepping for any keyword. But Webmasters can really be pretty fruitful for anyone.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Thats really impressive research work
August 20th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I find Fire Fox better than Internet explorer while giving results of websites,these are the two giants which has their worths in market.