Is Internet Explorer market share really plummeting?”
The new browser wars on on. More than a decade after Microsoft killed off Netscape with Internet Explorer, competition in the browser market has never been stronger. Just last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5, which has now been downloaded nearly 14 million times. Earlier in June, Apple released Safari 4. In March, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 8, and Google came out with a speedier beta of its Chrome browser. Explorer has lost 11.4 percent market share to other browsers. That is the combined market share of IE8, IE7, and IE6. Certainly IE8 (the light blue line) has been growing strong since its release last March, capturing 16.7 percent of the market as of July 4. Those strong gains make up for most of the drop in IE7’s market share from 49.1 percent in March to 30.1 percent yesterday, indicating that Microsoft is doing a good job of getting existing IE7 users to upgrade at a steady pace. And in mid-June, IE8 finally surpassed IE6, which still stubbornly holds a 7.6 percent
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s market share is absolutely falling. The question is, ‘By how much?’ I’ve reported before that Internet Explorer (IE) drops five percent market share points each year, while Mozilla Firefox gains five percentage points per year. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that IE’s market share may be dropping more precipitously than previously reported, falling to 60-percent share in June 2009 instead of the 68-percent share expected. Or is it? The answer may depend on the source of the information, and the reliability of its data. Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler uses StatCounter data to discern a 60-percent share for IE but, as ZDNet’s Larry Dignan points out, this data may not hold up. That’s not the sort of chart with which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer likes to sweeten his coffee in the morning. Net Applications, the other big source of browser market share data, still hasn’t posted its results for June 2009, noting that it is trying to make sense of “some signif
Given that market-share data isn’t a one-month phenomenon, it’s not necessarily helpful to celebrate or fret over the June data, especially since much of the market share-share data is going to get skewed in the summer months, anyway. For example, given Firefox’s disproportionately large following in Europe, coupled with Europe’s disproportionately long holiday season in the summer, I’d expect to see Firefox drop some percentage points against IE through August, only to rebound strongly in September. Regardless of short-term variations, one thing seems clear: Firefox is gaining on IE. Microsoft spent too long enjoying its browser dominance, and not enough time innovating. It’s starting to pump R&D dollars into IE again, but it’s not yet clear whether it’s monolithic approach to browser development can compete in the long term with Mozilla’s community-developed Firefox.
