It's that time of month again where we look at the ongoing struggle for browser supremacy.
Thankfully, the numbers from NetMarketShare show that Internet Explorer 6 is continuing to lose ground and now only holds 13.72 per cent of the global market. Much of this is believed to be in China, where the browser still commands almost half of net traffic. However, its share in the rest of the world is down to only 7.62 per cent as enterprises finally start to migrate away from the legacy browser.
Of course, Internet Explorer 8 is still the world's most popular browser and it continued to gain traction this month as businesses upgrade. However, Firefox 3.6 was still putting pressure on the market leader as it's share grew to a little more than 18 per cent worldwide.
Despite its beta status, IE9 also made a relatively strong showing, claiming 0.38 per cent of the global market. This makes it the most popular beta browser, handsomely outperforming Firefox 4, Chrome 8 and the Chrome 9 developer release.
Talking of Chrome, the research showed that users of the Google browser have been very quick to upgrade, and in November the latest version recorded the second largest monthly increase in tracking history. The browser gained a massive 5.64 per cent of the market in the past month, coming second only to Firefox 3.6, which grew by 6.09 per cent between February and March of this year.
Its market share may have dropped, but Opera had its own reasons to celebrate this month. The company revealed that its eponymous browser now had 150 million users worldwide, causing the entire PR team to take the day off and head to the pub.
