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Perhaps inconceivable just a few short years ago, it now seems inevitable that Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser won't hold onto its market share lead forever, and could fall to Firefox within the next 24 months or so. We say this because IE has been trending backwards in market share numbers, at least up until now.
Microsoft can breathe a sigh of relief in June, even if only for one month. For the first time in a long time, the world's most popular browser (in market share) increased its usage, stopping what's long been a slow, albeit steady decline. According to Web analytics firm Net Applications, IE's usage numbers inched upwards in June from 59.8 percent to 60.3 percent. While promising, Microsoft knows not to read too much into this.
"We certainly don't judge our business on just two months of data, but the direction here is encouraging," said Ryan Gavin, senior director of business and marketing for Internet Explorer.
Meanwhile, Mozilla's Firefox browser slid backwards from 24.3 percent to 23.8 percent. And don't take your eyes off of Google's Chrome browser, which rose from 7.0 percent to 7.2 percent from May to June. Still settling in at fourth place, Apple's Safari browser climbed from 4.8 percent to 4.9 percent, while Opera declined ever-so-slightly from 2.4 percent to 2.3 percent.
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AirPower4ever
July 01, 2010 at 10:23am
Defintely the numbers are skewed toward IE. I travel and review company software and I have seen Windows 7 being implemented. But, let's face it, management is not going to opt for Firefox and all the goodies it offers, hence why the spike.
The reports should be separated to home users and business users and then a total. Then we can see where Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, etc. are being used the most.
Everything changes but change itself
nHeroGo
July 01, 2010 at 9:06am
I remember the good old days, say 5 years ago, when IE had at least some 80% and a reporter asked Bill Gates about the declining usage of their browser, and Bill replied "Well... They will still be using Windows Update." I think that is one of the coolest thing a 7-dollar-hairdo-man could say.
PawBear
July 01, 2010 at 7:43am
IE's climb is no doubt due to millions of new default win7 installs. However, the browser wars are finally really heating up. With Microsoft and Google in the game Mozilla has got it's hands full. It'll be interesting to see how things shake out in the standards and speed tests.
"Either we conform the Truth to our desires or we conform our desires to the Truth."
Mighty BOB!
July 01, 2010 at 7:15pm
Yes this is probably the case. New computers with IE already installed.
