The first browser war started in the mid 1990s, where Netscape Navigator was the dominant browser of choice. Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer, and thanks to its distribution with new PCs, it eventually became the dominant browser of choice. Netscape Navigator (later Netscape Communicator) was eventually defeated, largely due to issues with distribution and the fee structure (while Internet Explorer was essentially 'free', one had to pay for Netscape's browser up to a certain point). (For more, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars).
Mozilla's Firefox, however, has a few advantageous over Netscape Navigator. Firstly, today, most people have high-speed Internet access, allowing them to easily download a new browser if they choose. Second, Firefox is completely free (and open source), eliminating two of Netscape Navigators problems. However, there's still the giant elephant in the room, and that's the fact that nearly all PCs made today ship with Internet Explorer installed, while very few are shipped with Firefox installed.
Numerous security threats, and in many cases, better performance is still not enough for people to switch browsers. What is needed to force users over to Firefox would be some feature that users had to have. But, whatever feature is added, you can be sure that Microsoft will add the same feature to Internet Explorer in its next release. We've seen this before with tabbed browsing. IE7 introduced tabbed browsing, but it has been in existence in some form in Firefox for quite some time.
Judging from the low ratio of Firefox to Internet Explorer users (1 to 5), things aren't progressing quickly for Firefox. But, consider what internal web applications you use at your place of employment. Are you able to use Firefox, or are you forced to use Internet Explorer? If you work on web applications, do you focus your attention on Internet Explorer, or on Firefox? If you work at a place like I work, Firefox is a word not muttered, nor does one care about it. Where I work, all of our internal apps run on Internet Explorer, and unless something changes, we never will. I'm sure the same applies to internal applications at many companies.
What does this all mean? Well, most people use Internet Explorer at work. And because of this, they're probably not interested in learning to use a second browser for home. In my opinion, until Firefox breaks through into the corporate world, it will not be able to gain a much larger market share. And until that happens, we will have a Cold Browser War, instead of a full blown browser war, like the one that we witnessed at the dawn of the internet age.
