Rumor has it that Dell may begin shipping PCs in the UK with Mozilla Firefox preinstalled.
The Firefox phenomenon is pretty amazing (see my earlier blog entry). If this rumor is true, it raises a few questions. Would Dell expand this program outside of the UK? My experience with Firefox is that most people (even non-techies) are fast fans of this browser quickly becoming addicted to the tabbed browsing, easy to install extensions for anything you can think of, and even to the themes that allow them to customize Firefox for any mood or holiday.
What impact would this have on the market share of Firefox? This could have a significant impact on the market share of Firefox, which has currently grown to about 9% without much more than a grassroots marketing effort. Preinstallation on a leading OEM configuration could quickly bump this number up significantly.