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Is IE Usage Share Collapsing?

Posted by kdawson on from the war-rejoined dept.

je ne sais quoi writes "Net Applications normally releases its statistics for browser and operating system usage share on the first of every month. This month, however, the data has not shown up — only a cryptic message stating they are reviewing the data for inexplicable statistical variations and that it will be available soon. Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a blog post that might explain what is happening: Statcounter has released some data that shows a precipitous drop in IE browser use in North America, to the benefit of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. At the end of May, StatCounter shows IE usage share (for versions 6, 7, and 8 combined) at around 64%; at the beginning of June it is now about 56% — an astounding 8% drop in one month. We should keep in mind the difficulties in estimating browser usage share: this could very well be a change in how browsers report themselves, or some other statistical anomaly. So it will probably be healthy to remain skeptical until trend this is confirmed by other organizations. Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"

4 of 575 comments (clear)

  1. typo in summary by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi there, submitter here. I left a typographical error in the summary. "in the beginning of June" should read "in the beginning of July". Oops, sorry about that.

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  2. No drop off here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    We've seen no major drop off, just a steady and slow decline. We track over 15 million users a day across the sites we manage here in the UK (mainly council properties).

  3. Looking from multiple angles by asa · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you look at the longterm trends reported by Net Applcations, something that StatCounter doesn't offer, it's hard to conclude that anything dramatic has just happened.

    http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/06/historical_view.html

    These longer trends are steady and smooth and there's nothing that's happened in the last couple of months that would cause IE to fall off the cliff.

    That being said, there is a lot of churn in the various browser versions. IE is really a collection of browsers with measurable share, IE 6, IE 7, and IE 8. Looking at these versions, it's clear that a lot is happening.

    http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/07/a_browser_prediction.html

    It's likely that IE 7 and IE 6 will fall to under 10% global share by the end of this year and that IE 8 will grow to approximately 40%. That would give IE 60% overall, Firefox about 25%, Safari about 10%, and "other" would hold the remaining 5%.

  4. Re:Proliferation of mobile browsers... by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 5, Informative

    You think that's something? I host a SpongeBob fansite, and even it has 40.38% for Firefox and 47.90% for IE from June 6th to July 6th.

    Looking at the data for the same period in previous years, I'm seeing:
    2008: 63.26% IE and 31.49% Firefox
    2007: 72.85% IE and 23.22% Firefox
    2006: 77.60% IE and 17.77% Firefox

    That's with 20,000+ visits in each period, so it's more than just noise.

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