Mozilla concerns over Firefox usage

I noticed an article over at PocketLint stating that Mozilla has admitted only 25% of users who download Firefox have become ‘active’ users. As Firefox is one of my favourite pieces of software - however I do use IE from time to time before the Microsoft zealots get started - I decided to try and dig deeper to find out a more info on this intriguing stat. Searching led me to Jack Schofield’s blog on the Guradian’s website, where he states

Firefox’s claims to success have been supported by clocking up the number of downloads, encouraged by payments from Google, but it turns out that 75% of the people making those downloads don’t “continue to use it actively.”

However I was still unable to find any reference to a quote from Mozilla themselves in his post or any reference to this stat on Mozilla’s website. This annoyance aside - Schofield does point out quite correctly that 25% take-up from downloaded free software is a very good result - I was still bemused by the validity of this stat, so I decided to make up research some of my own.

Whilst I have no way of providing you with any stats regarding Firefox download usage, I did manage to find some usage stats over at counter.com They showed, based on their clients data, Firefox usage at 13% for July 2007 compared to 10% for the same month last year. Whilst IE, both 6.x and 7.x flavours combined, dropped from 82% last year to 71% currently. Make what you want of the IE drop but Firefox increased its browser share by 30% over the last year, and that’s not a bad stat in anyone’s spreadsheet analysis.

So what does all this mean? Perhaps there’s a bit of Firefox bashing going on in the blogosphere, trying to make it all sound doom and gloom when it comes out that 75% of their downloads end up in the Recycle Bin? It seems a bit strange to highlight this (non-existent?) stat when all appears well with usage overall. What do you guys think?