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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?"
I find that my site gets about 45% Firefox or Mozilla hits, not counting my own of course. At about 130 unique visitors a day, that's not a big enough sample to mean the numbers of 12% are wrong, but definitely demographics play a large role in browser type. As Taco has pointed out, nearly all Slashdot readers use a Mozilla/Firefox browser. Sorry Mac fans, Safari isn't that big yet.
Oh You POS
Just the other day you said IE's market share was up, and now it's down? But... but... you both have statistics! I don't know what to believe.
I already have users who want to try IE7. And I am already hearing some negative feadback about Firefox being slower than IE. So I'm beginning to think that the worm has turned and we are going to start seeing an increase in IE again. I'll have a hard time recommending Firefoz again unless they can find a way to decrease their memory footprint. Of course I'll still use it along with Opera, but I won't be recommending it to anyone for awhile.
Used to be there was a clear performance difference, now I don't see it as much.
Security wise I think there's still a benefit to Firefox, but most users don't see security as that big of an issue. They think we're just making shit up when it comes to security differences between the browsers.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
As the "code bloat" of Firefox approaches that of IE, and IE 7 is released with tabbed browsing, better security, and all the other whiz-bangs "stolen" from Firefox and Opera, we will see a slowing of growth in Firefox's market share. Public acceptance / perception of IE 7 will have a big influence over Firefox's continued market share growth.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Since you asked for it:
Firefox Nein 2001451 58.5 %
MS Internet Explorer Nein 1059985 31 %
Opera Nein 179838 5.2 %
Mozilla Nein 89402 2.6 %
Safari Nein 31450 0.9 %
This is October data. As you can see from the numbers (we're talking 3.5 mio hits here), this is not a tiny site. As you can see from the site itself, it's not a Linux, Free Software or Firefox site. I've got plenty of AOL users, hotmail users and other "dumb", average, random Internet users as players.
History: Firefox was at 50% in January, 46% in October last year, 34% December 2004 (my oldest data).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
For those complaining about firefox's memory footprint, I suggest you read this. In general firefox will use more RAM only if you have more RAM available; you WANT more of your memory to be used for caching to speed things up (as long as it doesn't result in swapping). That said, there are a few real bugs in plugins, and probably the main codebase too. They are hopefully being worked on. By the way, here are my referer browser stats for October so far, for anyone interested.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Please, do not take my post as flamebait. I introduce general points. Many of you are geeks. Admit that, it's okay. Many of you are developers, too. Many of you are enthusiasts and like to tweak and customize out the wazoo. For all of you folk, browsers like FF are great. They're secure, customizable, not Microsoft, everything you could want in a browser. Now consider everyone else in the world. And actually, this even includes myself, even though I AM an enthusiast and a slight geek. You have IE7, given to you automatically via Windows Updates. No hassles required. It is already on your system, offers tabs and good security, and works without a hitch. It is integrated into the OS so it opens faster and does not introduce any problems. I have used IE6 for years and never once got a virus or spyware because of it. So please, tell me, why should I switch to Firefox? Answer: I shouldn't. IE7 may not pass some Acid2 test or whatever, but I am a user, not a developer. IE7 is secure and does what I need and there is really no reason for me to use any other browser.