Preliminary statistics from Net Application show that Internet Explorer is losing more ground in the internet browser battle. It’s not really surprising as Firefox, Safari and Chrome are all gaining popularity.
Internet Explorer usage dropped from 71.27 percent in October to 68.15 percent in December. Firefox went up to 21.34 percent, up 1.37 percent from 19.97 percent in October. Safari market share moved from 6.57 to 7.93 percent and Google Chrome from 0.74 to 1.04 percent. Opera did not move though, staying at 0.71 percent.
Net Applications does warn that the results may be skewed by the decrease in workplace use of computers. Still, there was a definite drop in IE market share. One thing that might have fueled this drop is an increase in Mac OS X and iPhone usage, both of which spark increases in Safari usage. Also, with Google discouraging use of IE market share will only continue to go down, as it has for years.
[via PCWorld]
Many years ago, Microsoft spent much time and $$ to win the ‘browser’ wars over netscape. Once MS ‘won’ the browser war, they let Internet Exploder stagnate for years until firefox came along and started to take some market share. Quite the business strategy for a company that claims to be a software ‘innovator’. I’m only baffled that IE still has such a 68% share with options such as Firefox and Google Chrome available.
Microsoft likes the thrill of the hunt, but once game has been captured, they lose interest and let it rot away.
Jon
http://buzvia.com - Where’s Your Traffic Going?
Part of IE’s survival relied on some of the companies who are still using yesterday’s technology and to only offer IE only web services.
Firefox and Safari needs to gain more market share before those companies change their strategy.
This is an important issue and I welcome this development. If Microsoft’s allowed to monopolize the web using proprietary formats, users will eventually have to buy their products to access web content. No more innovation.
Authorities need to use competition law to stop anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft bundles Internet Explorer with Windows and many users use IE simply because they don’t know there are better alternatives.
The best way to ensure that the Internet stays free and continues to encourage innovation, is to promote the use of free/open source software. I recommend the Firefox web browser. I’m happy that it is getting popular with mainstream users.