Firefox
Firefox is overwhelmingly a desktop browser.
- Mobile Usage (as a percentage of its total user base): While exact figures for “percentage of Firefox’s own users” are less commonly published directly, we can infer from its very low global mobile market share (around 0.5-1.5%) and its higher desktop market share (around 5-7%) that a very small minority of Firefox users are on mobile devices. It’s likely in the range of less than 10-15%, and possibly even lower. Its strength and history are firmly rooted in desktop Browse.
Google Chrome
Chrome is dominant on both platforms, but mobile contributes a larger share to its overall user base.
- Mobile Usage (as a percentage of its total user base): The data consistently shows that Chrome’s mobile usage (smartphones and tablets combined) makes up a significant majority of its total user base. Given that mobile internet traffic is 60%+ of overall traffic, and Chrome commands a large share of both mobile and desktop, it’s clear that well over half of Chrome’s users are on mobile devices. Estimates suggest this figure is around 60-70% of its total users are on mobile (primarily smartphones).
Apple Safari
Safari’s user base is heavily, almost exclusively, mobile.
- Mobile Usage (as a percentage of its total user base): This is where Safari stands out. Because Safari is the default browser on iPhones and iPads (iOS and iPadOS), its user base is overwhelmingly mobile. Its global mobile market share is around 20-23%, while its global desktop market share is only 7-9%. This indicates that a very large majority, likely 75-85% or even higher, of Safari’s total users are on mobile devices (iPhones and iPads).
Others
It’s worth adding that an estimated 20-40% of Brave’s user base is mobile and 20-30% of Vivaldi’s.
Firefox starts with a bigger disadvantage than both Chrome and Safari on mobile. On iOS, it’s all Safari under the hood anyway, so a lot of people don’t see any point switching skins. On Android, in my experience it works well, but you still find occasional sites that expect Chrome and miss features on Firefox, especially around Google Pay.
I used to use Firefox on Android several years ago, but at the time Nightly had significantly better performance than stable or Beta, and I think some extensions were also only supported on Nightly. Stable or Beta didn’t perform well enough for me to warrant choosing over Chrome. But because of the nature of nightly, every now and then an update would introduce UI or UX bugs, or occasionally even battery/performance issues. I use my phone as little as I can, so when it’s frustrating if it doesn’t work right when I need it. So, I have moved away from Firefox on mobile.
I’ve actually switched to Vivaldi. It works as well as Chrome in terms of sites playing nicely with it, and it also has good customizability. It doesn’t support extensions, but that alone isn’t enough for me to pick Firefox.
Yeah, the inherent advantages are real, hence why the comparison is about what percentage of the user base is using mobile. The fact that Firefox Nightly is so much better than the release means it’s easier for users to give it up, but to have 98.5% of users using desktop in an age where most web traffic is served to mobile devices is insane. Firefox is getting better though, so maybe we’ll see that ratio change in the next couple of years.
