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IE Losing 10% Market Share Every Two Years

Posted by Soulskill on from the slowly-but-surely dept.

mjasay writes "Mozilla's Asa Dotzler points to some interesting long-term trends in browser market share, noting that 'browser releases aren't having any major impact on the macro trends,' which suggests that a better IE will likely have little impact on its sliding market share. The most intriguing conclusion from the data, however, is that Firefox could surpass IE market share as early as January 2013 if Firefox continues to gain 5 percent every year, even as IE drops 5 percent each year. In the past, Microsoft might have fought back by tying IE to other products to block competition, but with the EU keeping a close antitrust eye on Microsoft and the US Obama administration keen to make an example of an antitrust bully, Microsoft may have few good options beyond good old fashioned competition, which doesn't seem to be working very well for the Redmond giant, as the market share data suggests. Microsoft's loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company's efforts to compete with Google on the Web."

32 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. There's an Artificial Barrier by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    That consists of
    • Corporations with policies of only using IE.
    • Non-technical individuals that have no desire to "upset" the voodoo magic that makes their computer connect to the intarnet.
    • IE enthusiasts.
    • People who use websites that only work in IE (like my employer's time card system brought to you by Mrs. Arnold's fifth grade class).

    These people will always keep IE's share above some percentage (I'd take a stab of about 66.6%). Also, and I appreciate Asa's non-profit work but I must question his for-profit source that he cited. Where and how was this data collected? It's a very difficult problem and everyone of these browser-share or operating system-share reports that hits Slashdot are ripped apart by readers as being statistically flawed. No transparency causes me to instantly dismiss these findings.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      "Corporations with policies of only using IE."

      But even that isn't working much. I mean, I'm working with federal govt. entities, and they are mandating that you can NOT download and use IE8.

      They have some apps that only work with IE, but, they allow Firefox, and from what I've seen, have no problems with letting you install and use plug-ins and update to your hearts desire. But, they have memos out saying IE8 is verboten, and will be removed from your box if they scan and find it.

      Interesting I'd say....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think you've put your finger on the strongest barriers to entry that Microsoft has erected. However, I'd like to point out that this list is the list of barriers they've retreated to. Bundling used to work in favor of IE. No longer. IE's reputation as the most compatible browser worked in their favor. No longer. Microsoft's hold over the development community meant that applications used to target IE. No longer.

      Microsoft has retreated to the safety of corporate apps. They are slow to change, and in result are dependable. Yet their market share continues to drop. And here's the catch-22: Companies who rely on IE specific technologies (and thus maintain IE as the "standard") stick with IE6. They are now experiencing pressures to change their browser standards. Eventually they will cave to those pressures.

      My expectation is that companies aren't going to be friendly to another round of Microsoft lock-in. They've done this song and dance too many times. Some will fall for it, but I have a feeling Microsoft's market share will vaporize as companies make an effort to target web standards rather than IE-specific technologies.

      So that evil percentage you gave won't be the stopping point for IE. It's going to the bottom whether Microsoft likes it or not.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    3. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by anaesthetica · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The link you provided does show IE losing between 7% and 12% per year, rather than Asa's rough figure of 10% per year.

      I agree with your assessment that there is an artificial barrier to Firefox adoption, that in the current environment there is a "natural rate" of IE use. However, as Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers make significant gains in marketshare, several knock-on effects will manifest:

      • New businesses or transitional businesses will have the opportunity to establish non-IE standards for their policies. Back when IE was overwhelmingly hegemonic, it wasn't viable to suggest standardizing on a <5% browser. Now that there are browsers with 20% (Fx) and ~10% (Safari), and Chrome which is backed by a multibillion dollar corporation, standardizing on something other than IE is far more defensible.
      • Absolute marketshare dominance is not necessarily what Firefox or any other standards compliant browser is aiming for, at least in the medium-term. It doesn't matter terribly if there is an artificial floor on how far IE can fall, given institutional path dependency. What matters is that the browser market can achieve a more plural distribution of marketshares. This will have two effects: first, raising the importance of adhering to web standards; and second, raising the importance of competitive innovation by browser vendors.

      In general, I agree with your suspicion that simply extrapolating from raw trends four or five years into the future is not a particularly valid or predictive exercise, because as you rightly point out the sociology of different blocks of users and their needs are different. Firefox may effectively eat up certain blocks, but that's no guarantee that they can effectively appeal to others.

      --
      The Rise and Fall of Online Community
    4. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by AlexBirch · · Score: 4, Interesting

      People who use websites that only work in IE (like my employer's time card system brought to you by Mrs. Arnold's fifth grade class).
      There will be a tipping point when any new web application will have to support all the standards.
      Janus now does this, but when I first was using them 8 years ago, they didn't support any of my browsers so I left them. Today they do, but now I use Scottrade. I think we're close to the tipping point for this particular line item, the others we're just SOL.

    5. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      W3 schools tends to be highly slanted away from IE, and already says FireFox is at 47%. This probably has to do with the fact that most of their visitors are web developers, and therefore a little more tech savvy than the average person. I would say that w3schools is actually a really bad place to look. If you could somehow get the stats from Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, and Google, you might be able to get the numbers to within 5% error.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    6. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Running old versions of software for improved security sounds like eating rotten food to avoid getting swine flu. You have exactly the same chance of running into some unknown virus, and you're dealing with something that you *know* is inferior and a vector for disease.

      "Once it's hardened..." Software doesn't magically become secure after fifty bugfixes. Even if that were true, the security update for IE6 is called IE7.

      I hope you're just informing us of this policy rather than espousing it...it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    7. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by TheLinuxSRC · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would think that Microsoft's Live Search is a bad source as well being that a). it is the default search in IE and b). whenever there is an update to IE MS seems fit to switch my preference *back* to live.com.

      On the other hand... Google's numbers are questionable being that FF defaults to Google. Yahoo's numbers are probably not great either due to the fact that their damn toolbar is bundled in everything.

      To get more reliable results I would suggest popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, NY Times. Of course, my sample is still biased towards the English language.

    8. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by TheLinuxSRC · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Also, MS has the resources to make IE a good browser if they want to. (pretty much all they have to do is cut it loose from Windows, make it standards compliant, and kill ActiveX forever).

      You have just taken away every reason that MS develops a browser.

    9. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by EvilBudMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At work here I have what I want IE8, Firefox3, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. I use Firefox mostly with IE8 coming in second, but Firefox has some memory leaks if pushed hard that IE8 doesn't have AND IE8 is better because of Firefox. So I think Microsoft has some good programmers. They do in fact have some good stuff but their marketing, now, is a different story entirely. But I mostly use IE8 for the same reasons that you use IE6 and it seems to have to do with certain sites where I pay my bills that I may have something blocked with Firefox for my normal surfing. Instead of trying to figure it out, it is just easier to bring up IE8. Now it looks great but it doesn't have that one feature that you can get with Firefox.

      "Ad Block Plus"

    10. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Bundling used to work in favor of IE. No longer.

      Wow! That's quite the assertion. What makes you think MS's illegal bundling of IE and Windows is no longer gaining install share for IE? Do you really think if IE were no longer bundled with Windows it would not decrease the install share of IE?

      MS may be losing Web browser market share, but that doesn't mean they will abandon their lock-in or that it is not still helping them. IE is a terrible browser propped up by bundling. MS is not motivated to make it a less terrible browser, just enough so that more people will use it but not enough so that it will enable people to bypass MS's Windows monopoly in an effective way. MS isn't even aiming at making IE better than other browsers, just "good enough" to maintain the largest share while propped up by bundling.

    11. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've seen plenty of browser articles on /. but have yet to learn what benefit companies derive by having a popular browser, and motivates them to put so much money and effort into their product. Anyone care to explain?

      The Web browser market is key to several other, very profitable markets including desktop OS, Web services, applications, media delivery, and computer hardware. Companies devoting resources to the Web browser market are profiting from one or more of those other markets.

      Here's an example. Google wants to provide a word processor via the Web (Google Docs). They profit by showing advertising and by selling support to corporations. Microsoft competes with Google by selling MS Word. Since Google's offering can only be accessed via a Web browser and MS controls the biggest Web browser, keeping IE unable to perform many of the functions Google wants in a timely manner prevents many customers from using Google Docs, which makes MS more money selling MS Word. So Google throws resources behind a browser that runs Web applications faster and better and has more functionality in the hopes that enough people will move away from IE so that MS can no longer use it as a tool to hurt their word processor business. MS tries to keep IE dominant so that they can hurt Google's business by carefully making IE better in some ways to keep people from taking the time to switch, while still keeping it crippled enough to hurt Google.

      MS is even more motivated because in addition to a word processor, they also sell their own Web services, which they want to use IE to promote and they sell a desktop OS and if people move to Web applications, they have less motivation to buy another computer with Windows instead of a cheaper one with Linux or a cooler one with OS X.

    12. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by sjames · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agreed. When the browser share is in the 90's, some (too many) apps will target that particular browser and feel justified in not supporting the remaining less than 10 percent. Especially in a corporate environment where there is some justification in insisting on a particular browser.

      However, when it gets into the 60% area, suddenly it's hard to reject nearly half of the potential market by tying your web product to just one browser. Especially when supporting that one can be more painful than supporting all the rest together. It *IS* that bad. A great many pages (especially scripted pages) have one thing for a particular version of IE (and probably doesn't work on older versions) and another that covers every other browser out there just fine.

      So those barriers will tend to go away just when IE needs them most. Meanwhile, it's nearly inevitable that MS will then release a "new improved" IE enhanced with super lock-in power, but that will just split the vote. The market share will be more like 40% IE X and 26% IE Y and 44% other (but since they are mutually compatible, 'other' might as well be a single browser). That will effectively leave two different mutually incompatible IEs, both with minority share.

    13. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I picked search engines specifically because it's the one thing that just about (although I guess not everybody) uses on the internet. Facebook, and Twitter especially tend to stay too much within a single demographic.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. browser wars are old news by alen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and no one cares anymore

    MS pushed IE because they were afraid another browser would kill Windows as an app platform. it's already happening anyway and MS is content to license ActiveSync to Apple and Google, FAT32 to GPS makers, Virtual Earth and other cloud/SaaS services they have that don't rely on browser or OS

  3. it will get worse thanks to IE8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and its hideous UI (that changed in IE7)
    not to mention the built in spywa~~cough "suggested sites" "feature" combined with the IE8 Safersite check and your browser will be spending more time uploading more data to Microsoft than downloading

  4. Re:And Razors, by owlnation · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Razors will have 100 blades by 2050 according to current growth rates.

    Could be, but could also be that what will happen is that by the time they get to ten blades or so, they'll introduce the revolutionary technology of the new single blade razor, complete with marketing hype to ridicule the fact that you need ten blades to shave, when one works better and more effectively.

    Of course, the price of the new single blade razor will be roughly similar to the 10 blade one -- if not slightly more expensive. Rather than one tenth of the price like it should be.

    The best use for the single blade razor however, would be to cut the throat of every marketing droid in existence -- sadly, few of them will suffer that fate.

  5. antitrust bully? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Obama administration keen to make an example of an antitrust bully

    It'd be nice to see them take on Apple and their bullshit use of the DMCA to shut down people trying to get iTunes to work on Linux.

    1. Re:antitrust bully? by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your chronology is flawed. Before Apple created either the iPod or iTunes there were existing hardware and software players constituting separate markets. Apple came out with both iPods and iTunes afterwards. That's fine. They bundled iTunes with iPods. That's fine too. in very recent times, however, the iPod has come right to the edge of what constitutes monopoly influence in a market. At that point, they are legally obligated to make sure their bundling does not unfairly advantage them over competitors in other markets including the music jukebox software market and the music download market. Apple has chosen to wait and see if the courts complain... which is fine. Apple will absolutely not be surprised, however, if the courts were to rule that they needed to change their business practices and if they are given a small fine and remedies.

      If anything, Apple leveraged their success to begin the end of DRM for downloadable music.

      Apple leveraged their success to promote their music service and their music player software and their phone and their Macs and their video download service. Most of that is legal, but some of it is questionable. They did, indeed, use their influence to take down DRM, a move which allows them to sell more iPods, and that's a good thing. They're also competing in a market already compromised by antitrust abuse from Microsoft and from the RIAA (both convicted at different times). I'd say they've been an overall positive influence, but that doesn't make their actions legal. It would be idiotic to take action againt them while ignoring the other abusers, but that doesn't mean the courts won't.

      The chronology completely refutes your position - which, BTW, you still haven't stated clearly at all.

      It refutes the my position, but you don't know what my position is? You're very confused.

      What did the iPod leverage?

      Umm, iPods are devices. They don't leverage anything. Do you know what leveraging is, in terms of antitrust?

      Apple leveraged share of the portable, digital music player market to gain in other, related but separate markets, including music jukebox software and music download services. This may or may not be illegal depending upon how great Apples influence in the portable, digital music player marekt was at the time of the action. Is that clear enough for you?

      Why do you persist in believing that just because no one has matched Apple's iTunes/iPod/iTMS market success that that in and of itself is anticompetitive...

      This is yet another strawman argument. I made no such claim. I explained clearly that the anticompetitive aspect hinges upon their market share with the iPod product and the fact that they tied that market to other markets. I don't know how much simpler I can make this.

  6. The browser is infrastructure by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Microsoft's loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company's efforts to compete with Google on the Web."

    Um, Internet Explorer loads google.com just fine. Chrome loads microsoft.com just fine.

    It doesn't matter what their market share is, Microsoft already lost. The web is now firmly based on open standards, not proprietary technology tied to a specific operating system.

    What we should be more concerned with is the fact that everything depends on Javascript.

  7. Re:Yeah, but I don't really like Firefox by Bellegante · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does anyone else miss how quickly ie4 was? I booted an old, unupdated system, connected to the internet (doubtless aquiring several nasty things) and ie4 was just.. there. Instantly. I know it had been preloaded into memory by the system, but it wasn't that. Every page was instantaneous, there was no wait time, even on an old P2. Then I updated, got firefox, and it all slowed to a crawl.

    I'd like something good for old systems - so I could use it on my new one and have it run that quickly. Maybe I should use Dillo..

  8. Re:Ignorati. by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Firefox will rise at a linear rate until it captures its natural market share.

    Why do you assume linear change? In my experience, once products reach a critical mass over the competition, they tend to "hockey stick". Which is to say, they make sudden, explosive gains, leveling out near their natural market share.

    I think the 2013 number is bogus, but only because I'm guessing we'll see a hockey stick sometime within the next year or so.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  9. Re:And Razors, by smellsofbikes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am told that circa 1998, Adobe had posters up in their offices that said something like:
    "In 1975 there were 20 professional Elvis impersonators. In 1995 there were 30,000 professional Elvis impersonators. By 2035 one of every three people will be an Elvis impersonator. Our job is to capture that market."

    Which I thought was funny on at least two levels.

    --
    Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
  10. Re:Yeah, but I don't really like Firefox by EvanED · · Score: 2, Interesting

    FF's memory usage patterns seem to be very dependent on the user and his luck.

    I'm running FF 3.0.10 on Linux, and this is what top says:

    PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
    17663 evaned 15 0 560m 311m 37m S 19.3 10.7 448:30.96 firefox-bin

    (I'm so glad slashcode collapses spaces like that. Point being, FF is taking multiple hundreds of megs. This is with 20 tabs open. (Part of this could be flash's fault). Also, FF has been behaving very poor lately in general, so I'm often restarting it.)

  11. Re:Yeah, but I don't really like Firefox by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IE4 was a piece of garbage. It was slow, it was bloated, it crashed regularly, it had odd rendering bugs, it tried to take over the desktop with a metric load of ActiveDesktop crud, and its usability was fairly poor.

    IE5 was faster, smaller, and generally a very good browser for its time. Which is why it was finally able to dethrone Netscape. All Microsoft did after that was fix a few bugs, add features nobody wanted, called it IE6, then sat on their fat arses for a decade.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  12. It's (also?) a trend in web page design. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Firefox is able to masquerade as IE. For some sites this has been necessary to view them. This results in Firefox being undercounted and IE being overcounted. (I haven't read TFA to see what, if any, mechanism they used to correct for that. Presuming they didn't...)

    What this says to me is most of the interesting web sites have migrated to designs that don't reject Firefox (and perhaps other "standards compliant" browsers) and as a result more Firefox users are browsing without the masquerade.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    1. Re:It's (also?) a trend in web page design. by cbhacking · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ironically enough, I've actually been known to do the opposite when beta-testing IE versions (7 and 8). With 7 it was rare, but by the time of 8 there were plenty of sites that would intentionally feed IE bad code (either in an attempt to be backward compatible to 5 or soemthing, or because they didn't like the browser). Using an IE plug-in, I would masquerade as Firefox or Safari to see how IE's standards mode handled the site. It was a strange sensation to see a site work/look *better* because I *pretended* to not be using IE.

      Admittedly, such testing is a very minor portion of the market. There are probbly orders of magnitude more people spoofing themselves as IE than the reverse.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  13. Microsoft may ENCOURAGE other browser usage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Why? - to avoid monopoly charges. My dad used to work for UPS, and they would routinely encourage people to use their competitor (FedEx) so that UPS would avoid monopoly charges.

  14. Re:how does IE "compete" with Google? by multipartmixed · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They did not say that IE competed with Google; they said that Microsoft competed with Google.

    Quick, which company am I describing?

      - Has an IM network
      - Has a large webmail application
      - Has a search engine
      - Has a browser
      - Has an office suite
      - Has a mobile platform
      - Has billions of dollars
      - Wants to be on every desktop
      - Is on most of them

    --

    Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
  15. Re:2013? by davester666 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yes, electing Sarah Palin to be President of the US will be the end of the world.

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  16. Re:Date is wrong. by jonaskoelker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But that being said, even with numbers in the 30-40% range.

    I think it would be good to have healthy competition. 90% firefox--is it really _that_ much better than 90% IE? Won't people become overly dependent on firefox and its quirks? Won't people write web apps which only work on firefox 3.0.5?

    Okay, it's a big deal better than IE, being more standards compliant.

    But I'd rather see healthy competition; IE, firefox, safari, opera, konqueror, each at 10-20%, vying for people's love and affection, competing with each other on who has the coolest features, the best usability or the fastest rendering engine.

    Then again, wearing my free software advocacy hat, I'd like it to be firefox vs. konqueror at 45-50% each ;) -- or there to be more free browsers.

  17. Re:Listen to the Nerds by mcrbids · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Huh? No, these aren't going anywhere. Windows netbooks are now outselling Linux netbooks.

    This may be true, but there weren't any netbooks at all being sold 3 years ago. Since Netbooks are cannibalizing the laptop market segment, the net effect is an increase of Linux in overall market share.

    OO isn't cutting into Office

    Maybe in YOUR office, but given that whole nations are standardizing on OO.o, and even the newest MS Office contains (limited) support for ODF, it would seem you are just wrong, here.

    Postgre isn't even in the same league as a database server,

    Have you USED Postgres? I didn't think so. It's a *very* solid performer, with an excellent implementation of ANSI SQL, very low defect rate, excellent data validation, excellent multi-core support, and good fail over support.

    and Chrome seems pretty much dead after an initial lovefest.

    Chrome rose, then fell, and then has been rising consistently ever since. Since both FF and Chrome are gaining market share, and IE is LOSING market share, it's hard to argue that it's "pretty much dead".

    Don't delude yourself into thinking that FOSS is taking off... the only thing denting MS at the moment is Apple and FF. We'll see how the recession shakes out Apple as well.

    I don't have to delude myself. FOSS is making a killing in the server space, where I work most, anyway, and Linux is showing solid growth. No, it's not commanding the desktop marketplace - yet. But that's not the point. They are GAINING marketshare, posting solid growth numbers, and Windows, by default, is LOSING marketshare.

    And it's the nerds that are leading the charge.

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.