Why is the market share of Firefox in Germany so much higher?

I recently took a closer look at Cloudflare’s new project Radar. Besides statistics about internet usage, attacks and popular domains, the site also shows statistics about the market shares of browsers.

Here is an overview of the global statistics:

Here the distribution in the USA:

And here in Germany:

When comparing the statistics, I notice a few interesting things:

In the USA as well as in Germany the usage of Firefox is higher than the world average. In Germany, however, it is much higher, instead of only about 7%, the share of Firefox in Germany is almost 21%.

The use of Safari (iOS and desktop) in the USA is significantly higher than the world average and in Germany.

However, Chrome (mobile) and Samsung Internet have higher shares in Germany than in the USA. But Chrome (mobile) in Germany still has less than worldwide.

The higher share of Safari in the USA can probably be explained relatively by the higher market share of Apple in the USA. While many people in Germany tend to rely more on Android smartphones (and Windows PCs), the iPhone (and Mac) share is significantly higher in the USA. Here are some statistics on this.

This different distribution naturally also affects the other mobile browsers. In Germany many people seem to use Samsung smartphones and the pre-installed browser Samsung Internet.

What I can’t quite explain is the high percentage of Firefox in Germany. Are people in Germany more critical of Google? I somehow don’t believe that…

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