Mozilla has successfully released its first rapid release cycle version of Firefox. While Mozilla is proud, there has been criticism that the new version number cannot be justified given the new features in Firefox 5. The transition also screwed corporate users and there is mounting disapproval close to Mozilla that the current product plan is beneficial to Firefox. Should Mozilla roll back its release strategy? Mozilla may have triggered an avalanche that it hardly control anymore.

Firefox 5 was launched in time, but without the necessary support of marketing and features, which resulted in doubt that the new release process actually benefits Mozilla.
More frequent updates and add-ons as well as applications that reach deep into the code of Firefox are now upsetting IT managers who deploy Firefox in corporate environments, who say that they won’t be able to keep up with Firefox’ new release schedule. Mozilla reacted in a clumsy way and alienated its corporate users, which caused not only Microsoft to jump on an unexpected opportunity, but prompted some Mozilla supporters to criticize the company’s product strategy.
We should remember that Mozilla just released Firefox 5 and the full effect of the rapid release process will not be seen until users understand the new product strategy, which is more likely to happen when we get Firefox 6 or 7 within the next 3 months. But it would be wrong to say that there is undivided support for the new Firefox and some may wonder if this rapid release cycle was such a great idea and if it has implemented in the best way possible.
Firefox 4 was a rather astonishing announcement in May of 2010 and resulted from what originally was targeted to become Firefox 3.7. However, Mozilla was surprised by the aggressively browser development pace at Microsoft and Google, which forced the company to create a much more comprehensive update that ended in an almost never-ending beta phase and a final product that was released 6 months behind schedule. By the time Firefox was released, it was already an old product. It was downloaded in huge numbers (about 228 million total), but we know that virtually all downloads were replacement downloads of existing users and Firefox 4 was not able to gain additional users.
In effect, Firefox 4 was handicapped with an old software upgrade mechanism that promotes a fragmentation of browser versions, as it relied almost exclusively on a user’s effort to manually request the update. Despite its substantial improvements over Firefox 3.6, there is still a considerable user base of Firefox 3.6, which is in line with previous product transitions, which suggests that a typical Firefox version needed about 4-6 months to be phased out and reduce its user base to the 2 -3% market share range.
Firefox 4 as a successful browser
Mozilla may have marketed Firefox 4 as a successful browser, but it is also clear that Firefox 4 was the first Firefox version that could not exceed the current Chrome version in market share (according to StatCounter) and there is no denying that Firefox 4 caused Mozilla to lose market share overall.
Between the launch of Firefox 4 on March 22 and the launch of Firefox 5 on June 21, Mozilla lost about 3 points in market share, according to StatCounter. There are many ways to describe a product as either successful or as a failure, depending on your view, but the bottom line is that the Firefox 4 market share development in no way justified the effort that was put in Firefox 4 and significant strategic errors have been made during the release process of the browser. Most importantly, Firefox 4 should have been released in October 2010, not in March 2011.   Of course, we know that the browser market changed more than once during the months Mozilla developed Firefox 4. We know that Google’s rapid release cycle has given Google’s users a compelling argument to ultimately stick with Chrome. A browser that is updated more frequently tends to have the perception of a more modern, up-to-date, more secure and overall fresher appearance. Not surprisingly, Mozilla decided to apply a rapid release cycle as well, which is really just a custom version of an agile software release strategy (iterate often to improve your product).
One of the main goals of this new release process is to deliver new software features much faster and when they are done, without having to wait for other new features to be completed. The actual version number of Firefox is less important and there are, by default, fewer new features in each version than before.
However, there is always a user perception that Mozilla cannot ignore and it is obvious that Mozilla has neglected the way it communicates with users and media. Mozilla mentioned in the Firefox 5 announcement that more than 1000 changes had taken place over version 4, but there was no single headline feature that could have prompted users to upgrade to this new version immediately.
There are a few hidden new features in Firefox 5 no one talks about and few really know about – such as idle connection tuning that has an impact on web developers and how they design web pages. There are clearly significant features in Firefox, but the lack of communication especially from the product team has created a browser version few can understand. It’s a browser that lacks identity and seems to have only been released because it was June 21 and the calendar dictated the release. That cannot be the right approach.
(Source: Conceivably tech