I never thought the firefox icon was a particularly good brand. Right now everyone has gotten used to it, but as a brand symbol, it means nothing unless you look at it in a large format, which is exactly the opposite of the way most people use it.
If I look at the icons in my quick start list, far superior to the firefox icon are: Skype, Utorrent, FileZilla, Winamp, Eclipse, even iTunes.
Firefox looks like an orange circle on a blue circle. It's not a strong visual identity - it's recognizable now because most people know it, but on its own, it's poor.
For example, how would you describe it? Internet Explorer is 'The Blue E'. Firefox is 'The orange circular kind of thing thing with some blue dots in the middle'. If you say click on the 'Fox wrapped around a planet', your grandma will not find the icon.
Seems like they're missing the forest for the trees. The Firefox logo could use a re-branding to be more recognizable, not have an animal showing you its back, and also to overcome negative bias in Asia (Foxes are considered Tricky - not clever).
Foxes are animal equivalents to robbers or tricksters in almost every children story I know (in Europe)... I'm not sure, why did you mentioned Asia specifically?
Every single symbol will have a negative bias for someone... but I doubt some person would skip firefox just because of the icon :/
Perhaps not skip - but it's an abstract and complex image whose only connection to the Internet is with the old concept of the "worldwide web" - emphasis more on world than web.
Compare that to Internet Explorer or Opera, who at least provide a memorable initial. Or Safari, whose symbol of a compass indicates travel in a more direct manner than Firefox's logo. (Chrome's logo is similarly strange - comes across as a Pokeball to me.)
If I look at the icons in my quick start list, far superior to the firefox icon are: Skype, Utorrent, FileZilla, Winamp, Eclipse, even iTunes.
Firefox looks like an orange circle on a blue circle. It's not a strong visual identity - it's recognizable now because most people know it, but on its own, it's poor.
For example, how would you describe it? Internet Explorer is 'The Blue E'. Firefox is 'The orange circular kind of thing thing with some blue dots in the middle'. If you say click on the 'Fox wrapped around a planet', your grandma will not find the icon.