EU’s Digital Markets Act Delivers: Firefox Gains 6 Million New Users as Browser Choice Screens Reshape Europe’s Web

Europe’s landmark Digital Markets Act is delivering measurable results for browser competition. Mozilla reports that more than 6 million people across the European Union have chosen Firefox as their default browser through the mandatory selection screens introduced under the DMA — a pace that works out to one new Firefox user every ten seconds.

The regulation, which came into force in March 2024, requires major technology “gatekeepers” — including Apple and Google — to present users with a neutral browser choice screen rather than defaulting them into Safari or Chrome. The impact, at least for Firefox, has been dramatic.

iOS Leads the Surge

An independent study by researchers affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) compared Firefox daily active users in EU countries against 43 non-EU countries, using the March 2024 DMA rollout as a natural experiment. Their findings are striking: 15 months after browser choice screens appeared on iOS, Firefox DAU in the EU was 113% higher than it would have been without the regulation. On Android, the increase was a more modest but still significant 12%.

The gap between the two platforms is explained by how each gatekeeper implemented the policy. Apple’s iOS 18.2 shows the browser selection screen to any user who opens Safari for the first time — including existing device owners — giving the mandate far broader reach. Google’s Android rollout, by contrast, has been more uneven, displaying the prompt primarily on new devices or factory resets.

Users Who Choose Stay Longer

Perhaps more important than raw acquisition numbers is the quality of the new users. Mozilla reports that people who select Firefox through a DMA choice screen have a retention rate five times higher than those who arrived by other means. That figure, the company argues, shows these are not curious one-time experimenters: they are users who genuinely prefer Firefox once they are made aware it exists and given a frictionless way to set it as their default.

The finding reinforces the core policy argument behind the DMA — that pre-installed default browsers do not succeed purely on merit, but in large part because the path to switching is buried in settings menus most users never explore.

The Battle Moves to the Desktop

Mozilla is not satisfied with the mobile gains alone. The company has publicly called on EU and UK regulators to extend the browser choice mandate to personal computers, pointing out that approximately 310 million desktops and laptops in the EU currently operate without any equivalent mechanism.

In particular, Mozilla has singled out Microsoft’s Windows operating system, accusing it of using what it calls “opaque design tactics” to steer users toward the Edge browser — for example, by intercepting attempts to download competing browsers and displaying prompts encouraging users to stay with Edge. An antitrust investigation into Microsoft Edge was separately launched by EU regulators following a complaint from Opera.

A Broader Industry Shift

Firefox is not the only beneficiary of the DMA’s browser choice mandate. Privacy-focused browser DuckDuckGo reported roughly 40% more users selecting its browser on Android. Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Ecosia, and Aloha Browser all logged significant user increases in the days and weeks following the DMA’s enforcement. Both Mozilla and DuckDuckGo have also submitted recommendations to the UK government’s ongoing consultation on online competition, urging Britain to adopt similar choice-screen requirements.

The DMA has not been without friction. The European Commission fined Apple €500 million in April 2025 for separate anti-steering violations, and closed a probe into Apple’s initial browser choice screen implementation only after the company agreed to design improvements. Critics of the regulation argue that compliance has been slow and that gatekeepers have, at times, designed their screens to subtly favour their own products.

What Comes Next

With the mobile data now firmly on the record, the debate is shifting to whether the same approach can be replicated across desktop operating systems — and whether the UK, which operates outside the DMA’s jurisdiction since Brexit, will legislate its own equivalent rules. Mozilla has urged UK authorities to act in 2026, and to extend choice requirements beyond browsers to default search engines as well.

For now, the EU experiment offers the clearest evidence yet that when consumers are presented with a genuine, easy-to-use alternative to pre-installed defaults, a significant number will take it — and, crucially, will stay.