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Internet Explorer bucks trend to increase market share

by Pete Mason on 1 July 2010, 16:26

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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While Internet Explorer is still far and away the most popular browser on the planet, its market share has been dropping consistently for some time. However, Microsoft may have some small cause to celebrate today, as the latest statistics from web analytics firm Net Applications show IE gaining in popularity this month.


While IE is still the reigning champion, holding around 60 percent of the browser market, it’s a far cry from the 75 percent that the browser claimed almost two years ago. Since then, Microsoft has seen IE’s slice of the browser pie shrink almost every month. In fact, this is the first time that IE’s share has increased since June last year. Admittedly the current increase is only 0.57 percent, but considering the millions of users across the world, that could represent a significant number of people switching browser.

The boost seems to have come at the expense of Firefox, which has struggled to grow its market share this year, even as Chrome and Safari continued to rally. While it maintains almost a quarter of the browser market, Firefox saw a drop of a little over half a percent for June 2010. While one month’s worth of data doesn’t make a trend, and considering all statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, Microsoft will surely be hoping that this increase halts IE’s fall in popularity.

Some positive momentum behind IE can only help matters in the run up to the launch of Internet Explorer 9, which is expected to be released late this year or in early 2011. All reports suggest that Microsoft is trying to counter much of the bad press associated with earlier versions of Internet Explorer by ensuring that IE9 is compliant with all modern standards while being quick, secure and stable.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and whether or not Microsoft will manage to hold steady for more than a month or two. We’ll be sure to make an update if there is any more movement in the browser wars.


HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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And I wonder how many of those users are IE6 users :rolleyes:
Or how many know what a web browser is
Temi_D
Or how many know what a web browser is

The proportion of these people can only be decreasing with that EU legislation, which means more people are genuinely choosing to use IE. Apart from those at work stuck on Windows 2000 and IE6, like many people at the hospital :rolleyes:

I myself have started using Opera more than FF due to a resource-hogging bug that causes FF to max out one core after a while of using it, necessitating an FF restart, seemingly regardless of which tabs are open. Might be a dodgy extension, but I only have about five installed and they're fairly mainstream. But I still use it on my laptop since I haven't got round to installing Opera on that, and still hope it'll be fixed in a later version.
Most people don't have a clue. These people will change browsers when they get new computers and they will choose Internet Explorer 9 because they havent heard of anything else.

I have chrome and explorer installed and i genuinly prefer internet explorer 8. I don't notice a speed difference and I'd rather have options vs Chrome's good looks.

Microsoft CAN hold the 60% is IE9 is good.
People don't use a web browser, they use ‘google’, because that's what they're home page is set to, or ‘ebay’. Either that, or they use the ‘e’ for ‘eeinternet’.

I was an FF user, until Chrome 4. Back then, Chrome was so much faster, and I realised that 99% of the ‘add-ons’ I used in FF I didn't really need and could live happily without. Happy with Chrome, and it's here to stay.