A study by Eduventures, an education research and consulting firms, on web browser preferences among college students between the ages of 18 and 24 years old revealed Firefox and Internet Explorer are tied at 45%.

Safari, Opera and Netscape follow with 5%, 1% and 1% respectively, while a 3% prefer other browsers like Avant, AOL and Camino).

Among Firefox users, a 65% answered that they also use Internet Explorer (thanks in no small part to Windows Update and I-don’t-care-about-web-standards sites). In contrast, only 31% of IE users also use Firefox.

It’s always interesting to see this kind of results as they evidence a much higher rate of knowledge and adoption among young users. And at the same time, tells about a possible more diverse future for the web and the benefit of more users.

Via Asa Dotzler’s blog.