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IE Market Share Drops Below 70%
Mike writes "Microsoft's market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. It's too early to tell for sure, but if Net Applications' numbers are correct, then Microsoft's Internet Explorer will end 2008 with a historic market share loss in a software segment Microsoft believes is key to its business."
So....heard that Microsoft might be laying off 15% of its workforce?
Well.....this might compound that.
Let me be the first (?) to say "Yay"!!
IE has been dominating and destroying the Web for far too long. The lower market share will indicate increased platform diversity and consumer choice.
This data is a month old. It was discussed on slashdot before (but I don't remember if it got its own article). Why not wait a day or so and post year-end statistics?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's been renamed several times, somewhat refactored, had a few parts replaced and a lot more added, but that code base was once the most popular browser on the planet.
--Markus
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Yes, I am surprised that even Chrome has a higher usage share, considering Opera is actually a very good and useable browser and has been around for a long time. It would actually be a great all-in-one solution for many since it is a great browser, email client and torrent downloading in one application.
This is really not a surprise. IE is an inferior product. It always has been. The market share it has received is solely attributable to the bundling with the Microsoft operating systems.
When people become savvy enough to realize there is a choice and be able to find and implement that choice.... they do. I have been trying to get all the offices, clients, etc. that I have worked with to switch to Firefox since.. well forever. It's more secure.
Now, I realize that there might be some MS fanboys out there to argue that point, but you have a lot of work to do. IE is horrible at security. It is almost as if they just don't care. I am willing to admit that IE is a bigger target, but that does not excuse Microsoft's behavior with it.
The greatest setback that Firefox, and others have is that Microsoft does not play nice with the world community. Until recently there have been a huge number of websites that will only work with IE. That is slowly changing now too. No longer are consumers and business customers chained to IE because Firefox cannot work with their website that they need.
The only direction IE ever could go was down. If Microsoft wants to change that then they need to do some serious work and start cooperating with the rest of world. Build a better product is the simplest way to put it.
In the end it will Microsoft's hubris that pushes IE into the minority.
I think just about everyone in tech, outside of Microsoft, saw this coming. Instead of adopting inclusive standards, MS opted for exclusive, proprietary technology and then implemented it poorly. ActiveX, VBScript, .NET...all require Windows and IE to work right. They tried to tie their OS to the development environment, the server environment and did everything they could to try and force the client as well.
IE was a stagnant, monolithic bug farm that lacked imagination and, perhaps most desperately, innovation. How many Firefox add-ons would be hard to live without? NoScript, FlashBlock, FireFTP there are dozens of applets that let you customize your browsing experience to your preference.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Considering Opera's install base on mobile devices I would expect that number to be much higher. Considering its common configuration to mis-identify as IE to avoid website misbehavior, I predict that that number is seriously under-representative of the true marketshare. Also, never use statistics that are not explained. What does "70%" mean on this chart? 70% of visits (define visits?)? 70% of hits? 70% of unique IP addresses? 70% of traffic?
How about NOT pointing out that more than two thirds of users on this planet are still browsing the net with IE -
I imaging that just about 2/3rds of people fall into those categories. Those that are scared of their computer probably think that Firefox is a virus because it wasn't pre-installed at the factory, these people also are the type to still have the Dell wallpaper still as their desktop background because changing it might somehow break their computer. These are the older people or people who don't really understand that the worst they can do to their $1000 is delete all their data.
Those that use their computers very little usually think of their computers only as tools to write e-mails, check blogs, and get on iTunes. They don't care about their browsers, they don't care about most anything on their computer. They might know how to play FreeCell but thats about it. This is a lot of students and working people.
And it is self-explanatory about those who have other people manage their computers, they just lack the access to change the browser or are afraid of getting yelled at by their computer-illiterate CEO because they installed Firefox even though it would be better than the IE6 currently installed on the company's desktop.
So really, 1/3rd of computer users know how to actually *use* a computer and have root access on their boxes. Or they just use Mac/Linux and wouldn't use IE.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Get over yourself already.
Used to be web *was* IE and people were reduced to fool web pages with bogus client ID to get working IE web code instead of terrible buggy netscape 4.x code or just simple "get IE" -banner.
2/3rd is still a lot but it was 90% a little while ago and it could be perfectly justified to develop a new site IE only.
With these figures, in 2009 new sites designed have even stronger reason to cater for the "other" demographic.
Too bad there's no credible alternative to vista or vista 2nd release in sight for your average gaming-oriented PC. I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there. And the other notable requires joining a cult with the membership fee charged in overpriced hardware.
Somehow I must question those surveys. While quite a number of people I know use Windows, almost no-one I know actually uses IE as their default browser. Unfortunately severely insecure features of IE, like ActiveX, are needed to upgrade Windows. I'm sure Mozilla is capable of making its own 'ActiveX', but I guess they'd be sued as we are talking essentially American businesses. As we all know, it is rather difficult to remove IE from Windows. Clearly, the best option is the trend: Abandon Windows!
Any hacker can make their Firefox (or Opera) look like IE or any other browser. For instance, I don't use "Flash", but while I use FreeBSD, the scripts say its "Flash-10" on "IE-7" on Windows. Perhaps I should have some pride and tell the truth? I'm using Firefox, but I'm not sure that Firefox is what I have set in my proxy. Let me explain. Ikea, in Holland, gives you a 5% discount if you order with IE. Of course I'm not going to fire up Windows to order from Ikea! So, I simply "lie" and take 5% off.
If IE has up to 70% market share, its simply because Windows doesn't allow you to choose your browser like any other system does. If they did, they could just as well throw in the towel on IE. The percentage that use Windows is suspect too. Maybe some have it on hand just for an application or two? I know for a fact that many Windows desktops are running in Linux. (Doesn't an Xterm look great on a Windows desktop? ;)
Finally: (Taco) How many more people say they use Firefox on Slashdot than your logs indicate? I think you see what I mean.
BillSF
It's control. If the majority use IE, then MS can push out their proprietary standards that will force everyone else to buy their development products, and maybe use their server platform.
Safari on Windows just... fails compared to Firefox. No extensions, the strange Aqua GUI which no doubt increases the amount of memory and libraries to load that is un-themeable, and just about 0 customization makes Safari hard to recommend. Granted, its better than IE, but compared to Firefox just about everything minus the WebKit rendering engine (which, isn't much faster or slower then Gecko) can be done on Firefox and much, much, more.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Okay let's start with the obvious
1> IE being popular means it makes sense to run a windows server to maximize compatibility for businesses.
2> Search traffic gets sent to MSN by IE.
3> Microsoft can dictate coding standards forcing other browsers and coders to have trouble competing.
Then of course the fact some websites won't work with anything but IE (because they can't be bothered to tweak for other browsers too) and of course the homepage of IE will be msn. Add on top of that Microsoft will make other coding software- which of course will easily be the best in line with its browser.
Of course you can just take the line that Microsoft, Apple and Google are all putting serious money into this market- so it HAS to be hugely valuable for some reason.
It's called a "trend." Snapshot statistics are not important. Trends are very important. This has been going on since 2002. If you lose 5% browser-share share every year consistently, eventually you go away. It happened to Netscape, and now we know it can happen to IE.
Mac's market share went up more last month alone, than there are people using Linux as a desktop OS altogether (no time frame).
Just like Opera, which has been stuck at ~0.7% since pretty much forever.
When you can't somehow manage to give away your main and only product, and most people would seemingly rather pay a lot of money for the alternative (like Macs), you know you have a serious problem.
Something must suck with your product, when people would rather pay a lot for the alternative than use yours for free.
Microsoft will not take this lying down. When Java started eating into VB, Microsoft plunged tens of billions into dot-net, and for the most part stopped the bleeding.
A focused MS can produce like nothing else. Prepare to see gobs of features added to IE. It will be comparable to making Emacs look like Notepad when the dust settles.
IE has stayed mostly the same for most of the decade. This is probably about to change. They'll probably add music and video managers, spell-checkers, text-box history savers, better widgets such as editable data grids, email/Outlook integration, history searching, Google-like hard-drive searching, kitchen sink, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
More and more people are buying iPhones (and other handhelds) and using them to surf the web.
Not to replace their normal browsing, just to browse the web more.
This report is very slim on details (it doesn't even say where the metrics came from), but I'm going on a hunch here that it's not so much Firefox is gaining in popularity, but that overall usage of the web is increasing and moreso with devices that IE is not on.
Some simplified math: If 8 people use IE and 2 use Firefox, IE has an 80% share. Now add 2 more people to the party, both on iPhone/Safari, and IE's market share drops to 66%.
I honestly don't think Firefox is making a dent in IE for the desktop, when you compare it to the beating it's taking elsewhere. It's clear that Microsoft, if it wants to retain dominance in the browser market, needs to do something with the handheld sector and quickly. PocketIE is great for sites that are mobile-ready, but for everything else it lacks and is driving people away.
-David
This is really not a surprise. IE is an inferior product. It always has been. The market share it has received is solely attributable to the bundling with the Microsoft operating systems
This is not true at all. IE 1, 2 & 3 were not as good as Netscape Navigator and they suffered, but IE 4 was hands down better than other browsers. It mainstreamed a fully programmable DOM, where Netscape Navigator had what, document.write, and a bunch of junk about layers.
And, while we lament the death of Netscape, you do have to remember that while free IE may have killed Netscape on the client side, I'd be willing to bet that Apache utterly crushed Netscape on the server side. Does anyone remember Netscape web servers? Ah, that's a big negative. I remember even in the late 1990s our Sun admin was looking to replace Netscape web server with Apache... him and others like him really finished that company off.
The only direction IE ever could go was down. If Microsoft wants to change that then they need to do some serious work and start cooperating with the rest of world. Build a better product is the simplest way to put it.
This is very true. But you have to understand that the counterpoint to Microsoft's strategy is to get people to think about rich clients again and they are actually being rather successful with VSTO and Excel integration. I see lots of contract work with Excel front ends, instead of web front ends, these days. It's a crappy technology, but businesses pay for it.
This is my sig.
Netscape tried this... see where they landed.
Everyone trashes Active X as a security problem while Mozilla plugins get a pass and this is rather silly. The essence of both is that you download a DLL and it runs arbitary code in the process space of the browser (and then hence, often the user). Active X is just a different way of talking to the DLL, nothing more.
If you can run flash plugins, java plugins, and other plugins, inside of a browser, they can and will have the same security problems that plague Active X. It's random binary code that a user gets off of the internet.
SERIOUSLY, ANYONE BITCHING ABOUT ACTIVE X SHOULD JUST READ THIS GODDAMNED LINK.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/
IT'S THE SAME FRICKING TECHNOLOGY... UNIDENTIFIED BINARY CODE RUNNING IN THE SAME ADDRESS SPACE AS THE BROWSER.
DUH.
This is my sig.
I've just posted December and 2008 total stats for all of the browsers along with a bit of analysis. IE lost another point and a half of share in December and will finish the year down almost 8 points from where it started the year. That's not just bad, that's awful, horrible, really really bad. It's especially bad considering that 2008 was a record year for new PC sales, with ~300,000,000 new PCs shipping with IE7 as the default browser!! They shipped 300 million copies of IE as the default and still lost 8 points of share during the year. More at my blog (it really is worth reading if you're interested in this topic. i promise.) Browser Market Share for December and 2008 - A
Are you sure *MARKET*share means what you think it does? Microsoft only "sells" IE as packaged with XP, Vista and Windows Mobile. Few customers license the Trident layout engine. It's no wonder IE has shit for marketshare.
The Mozilla foundation does pretty well for themselves. Not a huge moneymaker but they're afloat and doing ok.
Opera is also doing great licensing their browser and its components all over the place.
Internet Explorer simply isn't a moneymaker for Microsoft. Microsoft probably spends more money maintaining IE than they do selling/licensing it.
Yes. Lotus Domino / Notes.
That's like saying that suicide is always an option.
..."Firefox really has a much higher share because of all the users who (do what you said)"...
If mozilla would pull their heads out of their asses and do what I said, they'd take over another 15% easily.
Notice how the graph in TFA dips on the weekend--and also how the article comments "IE6 loses a lot of share on the weekend"?
Most people are at home on the weekend. They install Firefox on their local PC and surf the net.
But at work, people are still stuck with Microsoft shit. Why? Mozilla still hasn't released an MSI of Firefox.
I admin servers for several companies. If I could simply push out a copy of Firefox using Group Policy, I would give firefox about 250 additional users first thing tomorrow morning.
The moment Mozilla makes it easy for corporations using Windows and Active Directory to deploy their software--plus add the ability to control things like the home page via Group Policy, they'll be set.
But until they do, I'm not going around to 200 computers every few weeks to install or update Firefox.
There's no place like