The Firefox Hardware Report is a weekly updated report of the hardware used by a representative sample of Firefox’s release channel user base.

It is a tool for developers primarily but published so that anyone may access it. It can be best compared to the Steam Hardware Survey which is a monthly report on the hardware and software used by a sample of Steam’s population.

The Firefox Hardware Report answers interesting questions. It reveals the operating system distribution on the release channel, as well as the processor, graphics, and Flash distribution.

Firefox Hardware Report

The report website displays general distribution statistics at the top. The most used operating system is Windows 7 for instance followed by Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Mac OS X. Windows 7 leads by 10% and sits comfortable at 45% of the market share.

Adobe Flash, which was once installed in nearly any browser on the market, continues to drop. About 64% of Firefox release channel installations have Flash installed at this point.

A click on “more details” displays charts that offer additional details. If you click on the link underneath operating systems, you get a chart that details operating system changes over time.

Windows 7 did not lose much market share in the past ten months while Windows 10 managed to slowly work its way up. The April 2017 stats show Windows 7 at about 48% and in January by 44%; not a large drop.

Windows 10 market share increased from 17% to now 34% in the ten-month period. Other Windows versions dropped, and other non-Windows systems remained steady in regards to market share. The chart excludes XP and Vista because the population was moved to Firefox ESR by Mozilla.

What about 32-bit vs. 64-bit? The Firefox Hardware Report answers that as well. Firefox 32-bit dominated much of the year but was surpassed by 64-bit versions of the browser in late October. More than 66% of the release channel population runs 64-bit versions of Firefox as of January 2018.

How does that correlate with the architecture of the operating system? 80% of operating systems are 64-bit according to Mozilla’s statistics as of January 2018 indicating room for further growth.

The charts offer information that you don’t find listed in summary at the top. There is a memory chart for instance that shows how much RAM systems have. Systems with 4, 8 and 16 Gigabytes of RAM are on the rise while systems with less than 4 Gigabytes are losing market share.

What about display resolution? This is probably the most crucial metric for web developers. The display resolution 1366×768 sites at 33% and 1920×1080 at 23% of the market share. No other resolution has a market share of more than 10%.

Closing Words

The Firefox hardware report offers useful insight for web developers and users interested in trends.