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IE Market Share Drops to Lowest Level in Years
Cultural Mosaic writes "Browser market share figures for September were released yesterday, and the numbers showed a big dip for Internet Explorer, as it dropped to just 82.10%, its lowest market share figure in years. Ars Technica notes that 'it's no surprise that Internet Explorer has been losing ground steadily over the past couple of years. There have been no significant innovations in the browser since XP SP2 was released over two years ago, and most of those were security tweaks.' Firefox grew from 10.77% in June to 12.46% while Safari jumped to its highest figure ever, 3.53%. I wonder how the release of Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 later this month will change the game?"
IMHO, the new releases could be very good or very bad for Firefox. It all depends on if they fixed the common complaints about it. If it's not such a memory hog, and doesnt lock up after being open too long, I'd say it could solidify Firefox's user base. However, a lot of people I know are really fed up with that. I think that's it's largely an addiction to tabs that keeps them loyal. Since IE7, at least outwardly, emulates a lot of the positives of Firefox, they might convert back if these glitches arent fixed.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
The vast majority of people who have switched away from IE probably won't switch back if they're already satisfied where they are. Not to mention the fact that the "Internet Explorer" brand has become synonymous with "security risk" to those people, regardless of how much better IE7 will be compared to previous versions.
The thing that _will_ change is the adoption rate of alternate browsers, but this largely depends on how well IE7 deals with the many issues of IE6. Part of this we'll see right away (ie. interface enhancements, rendering engine enhancements, security features, etc), but the part that counts will be how frequently it is exploited in the months following its release, and in particular how quickly Microsoft deals with it.
I feel IE works for vendors, merchants, hackers, etc. against me.
I feel other browsers are my tool.
That's why I use firefox.
Microsoft really has gotten in bed with other merchants so much that I just don't trust them.
Oh.. and there is also the relative lack of virus's and attacks on firefox.
Plus... it will work still when I switch to linux finally.
I have a long term goal of switching all my applications to ones that work anywhere so I won't be tied to windows.
Obviously- Everquest isn't on that list but it's really the only thing keeping me on windows now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If it weren't for anecdotes like mine, then Slashdot would be a rather dull place, wouldn't it? And comedians predicting the kind of comments to come would have nothing to joke about if the anecdoters stayed away.
No single one of us can give a complete picture of the browser situation, but it is interesting to see what kind of blogs and websites attract what kind of browser users. When I get a few hundred hits from Slashdot, not surprisingly Firefox is the majority browser for users from this site.
Firefox 2 probably won't make an exponential gain in Firefox converts, not until extensions are updated to work with it. When that problem is out of the way, I expect only linear gains, unless a more clever marketing strategy than they have now is started.
Oh You POS
Isn't this data from the same "Net Applications" company that never publishes their source data or even methodologies and was demonstrated to have factual errors and contradictions in the summaries of their reports? I mean I'm happy with a trend towards less IE use, but I'm not about to just take these people's word for it, especially from a marketing firm. Give us real data or shut the hell up guys.
In the words of Mark Twain, "There's Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics."
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
IE7 does a pretty good job of "just working," too. And despite all of the developer's comments to the contrary, most end-users switched to Firefox for a very few reasons:
1) it was the "cool", "edgy" thing to do
2) it has tabbed browsing
3) it was faster than IE.
Well, IE7 takes care of 2 and 3. And time basically takes care of 1. I'm a web developer so I have most of the major players installed on most platforms. You know what? On my Windows box I end up using IE7. On OSX I use Safari. On Linux I use Firefox, but I don't do casual Linux work that much any more (even though it used to be my primary workstation). For actually using the web, I prefer Safari hands-down. Second place honestly on Windows would go to IE7 at this point. Its fast, does everything I want it to, and it "just works," whereas Firefox seems slower and has slightly more issues on the websites I personally happen to visit.
Is this proof of anything? Not even close. But it does mean that, for most people, Firefox isn't the slam-dunk it used to be. Even when it comes to security, as long as you're comparing it to IE7 (although to be honest even with IE6 I never came across a security issue - but I don't go downloading HappySmileyFunPack(tm) either).
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
IE7 is not a value-add for Vista. As a product bundled with Windows, IE7 only needs to be decent enough to keep ignorant consumers from seeking alternatives. How does Microsoft expect to make money with IE7?
The marketshare for web browsing from a Windows PC is shrinking. I'm not just talking about Mac OS X and Linux. Realize that this is the year 2006. We snipe eBay auctions via mobile phone. We get RSS feeds on our PDAs. The people using the web these days are doing it less and less with desktops running Windows. I can't buy IE7 for Windows Mobile or Symbian. IE7 doesn't just fail to add value, it fails to compete at all.
There is a big difference between market share (number of people using a particular browser) and web usage (how many hits by a particular browser). When someone says that market share of IE is 82%, it should IMHO mean that 82% of users are using IE. But IE users tend to use the web a lot less than Firefox users. Why ? Huge amounts of pop-ups, no tabs (lots of Windows saturating the task-bar, security holes). IE users are, from my point of view, mostly occasional users of the Web. They simply use what is installed as default. Advanced web users will be rapidly pissed off by the pop-ups and other annoyances... and switch to something else...
All of these people posting "My site gets XX percentage of browser A" need to take into consideration what their site is about. Now, I would guess that the majority of /. users are not running anything that remotely may interest IE users specifically. Many are Linux web sites or Firefox web sites. OF COURSE these are going to be skewed toward a non-MS web browser. If I was running IE4U.com or something that attracted windows users explicity I would bet that my server logs would show a majority of IE browsers and windows operating systems...ya think?
So unless the web site stats being posted here are completely neutral, like MSNBC.COM, I don't see a point in posting those stats.
It's not like it's that big a drop. They still have many times the share of their nearest competitor, and Firefox is not gaining ground as fast as it once was.
I won't be celebrating until Firefox takes over IE, but seriously, what are the chances of that *ever* happening?
Furthermore, the article points out that IE has not had any really big improvements in ages. It is likely that has had a big effect on the uptake of other browsers. From the average users perspective, the only thing they get out of switching to Firefox is tabbed browsing. They'll get that in IE7 for free.
What can IE's competitors use to differentiate themselves from IE (to the average user) in Vista-land?
Can't just figure out somehow that my (secondary) computer has 92MB of ram, so it probably shouldn't cache 105MB in memory? Or that I only have 1GB of memory on this computer, so it probably shouldn't cche 1.5GB (it happened on a rather image-heavy site)?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Nonsense - We have a small quantity of water in the glass, and it just had a few more drops added to it.
If we all sit around and hope Firefox will magically continue to gain market share, that glass is ultimately going to evaporate. Unless Firefox actively competes, they are going to get trampled.
And as said time and time again, the browser will be used at its defaults by most users and should function at peak performance in that configuration if you want the user base to grow anywhere near the size of IE's.
>>Nonsense - We have a small quantity of water in the glass, and it just had a few more drops added to it.
The difference is that the dork that used to claim he didn't have to code to w3c standards used to spout that he covered 90% of the market doing things specificly for IE.
It sounds pretty stupid now to say that your website is good enough if it works for only 82% of the public.
Critical mass of coverage by someone to lazy to test on browsers other than IE always seemed to be around 90-95%
We've already seen a huge change in how popular sites are designed in the last 2 years or so. My guess is that if IE were to drop down into the 70s, even the dumbest website desingers would have no choice but to test against multiple browsers.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks Mac's Safari is great and all but runs OS X alongside Firefox. I just prefer it's interface and features over Safari (especially the blatantly lacking tabbed browsing), so even though Mac's market share may go higher and higher, Safari's doesn't necessarily go higher along with it.
Well that's easy to say, but how do you compete in the browser market? It seems like every new feature we see in Opera or Firefox is quickly copied by Microsoft in their IE betas, and also copied in the newest Opera and Firefox releases. How do you compete with that?
Since competition is often equated with innovation, I might as well bring this up: On a somewhat related note, are new features even what people want in a browser? I mean, Opera's mantra was once "faster, smaller" and even their products are starting to bloat in favor of added features. Aside from being an open source product and enjoying the benefits of that, the only thing that Firefox really has going for it these days is its modular design and extensibility (and even then some argue that "This should be included, it shouldn't be an extension!")
I suppose Mozilla could continue to rely on word-of-mouth advertising in addition to their promotional campaigns, but ultimately how do you overcome the fact that it's just easier for non-internet savvy people to use that big blue 'E' on their desktop that came with Windows?
I have yet to find something I can't make Opera do.
Since you now can write your own widgets and it has UserJS, I refuse to spend all that time downloading and keeping plugins up to date when a FF update breaks something.
Artifical Intelligience is no match for natural stupidity.
"If we all sit around and hope Firefox will magically continue to gain market share, that glass is ultimately going to evaporate. Unless Firefox actively competes, they are going to get trampled."
Firefox is gaining, IE is losing.
What's your point again?
evil is as evil does
"When IE7 comes out, that will change."
/. I have installed firefox for dozens of people not one of them ever complained about memory usage or performance.
I guess time will tell.
"I refuse to use Firefox due to its ridiculous memory usage."
The only place I hear this complaint is on
You can of course refuse to use it for whatever reason you want but that does not change the overall trend.
"This is something that people would be mocking IE for, but it's Firefox, so it's given a pass."
If you provided a specific, repeatable bug report I don't think anybody would give it a pass. It's been my experience that every bug report to firefox gets looked at pretty seriously even if it's a dupe or only occurs on one platform.
evil is as evil does
Maybe you are right. Either way they are ordinary people with ordinary needs and firefox seems to make them happy. So I don't see how your perceived memory problems will make any difference to them.
evil is as evil does
Gaining slowly against a static competitor is good news but it's not great news.
The critical way to read it is that a browser that hasn't been touched in 2 years still has an 80-odd% share. And that browser has a big, BIG update coming which includes the one feature in FF that most people consider the "killer app".
The problem is not users with a clue. If you can manage to use IE6 and not get infested with malware it's because you know what you are doing and you know what not to click. The average user does not. Keeping a system clean using IE6 requires a knowledgable user actively guarding against getting crap on your system.
The problem is that most users do not possess the knowledge required to use IE6 cleanly. That is why FF is good. It helps protects users who don't know how to protect themselves. If you can use IE without a problem then great, use it, but pretending that IE6 is safe to use for a general user is a bit of a stretch.
There's also the small issue that FF just works better, but if you don't care about things like standards compliance and open source then it's just a matter of personal preference and there's no accounting for that. As a long-time FF user I don't understand how anyone could willfully choose to use IE but hey, diversity is what makes the world interesting right?
Rambling on here more then I intended to, but my point is simply that yes, it is possible to run windows and IE and not become a malware infested zombie, but it takes effort and know-how, two things that the average user doesn't (and shouldn't need) to possess.
Well if you don't care about tabs and the huge number of extensions available, and you have no intention of ever doing anything under a non-MS OS, and you don't care about the Internet improving faster than the pace its improving now, then yeah I guess IE is fine.
But you are missing out on a lot of stuff. And installing firefox is insanely simply (I just installed it on a system today, it took less than 2 minutes) and it will keep itself up to date, so no worries there. And if you ever find yourself using a non-MS OS, lets say at a new job or on a public terminal or whatever, IE will not be available.
And then there's the problem of IE halting improvements to the web. We'd all benefit if CSS was improved from the sorry state its in currently. But its pointless to make these improvements, because MS isn't implementing them. A more advanced CSS won't work for IE users (the majority of Internet users) so web developers can't use them. If less people use IE, MS has less influence over web standards and then improvements can be made. As it stands now web standards haven't moved an inch since IE became the dominant browser.
This issue seems like its a developer issue, not a user issue. But it is a user issue because users are being denied higher quality web content because of the suckiness of IE.
Unfortunately this is a Tragedy of the Commons type of situation. If you individually switch to firefox nothing changes. Its only if the majority of web users switch that will improve the net. And even then the improvements will take years. It's like pollution. Sure its easier for you as an individual to just hop in your car and drive to work than it is to use public transit. But we're all better off if more people use public transit.
Amen to that. Personally I prefer Opera (since at least version 6) and the biggest usability improvement is that sites now are coded to standards. I don't care that Opera's marketshare is near zero as long as they manage to stay fairly current with new tech like AJAX and DOM manipulation, standards compliance (ACID2 anyone?) and such. Whatever the other ~20% is, be it Firefox, Safari, Konqueror or some other variation doesn't matter as long as it is there.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings