Microsoft IE Browser Share Dips Below 50%

alphadogg writes "Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has dominated the Web browser market since blowing by Netscape in the late 1990s, last month fell below the 50% market share level for the first time in years. IE's share of the worldwide market fell to 49.87% in September, down from 51.3% in August and 58.4% a year ago. It is followed by Firefox, which increased its share slightly from 30.09% to 31.5% and Google Chrome, which grabbed 11.54% share, more than triple its September 2009 share, according to market watcher StatCounter."

Comments

Re:Google Chrome Frame

[pahles]

The fraction is quite large unfortunately. Lots of companies still enforce the use of IE6! All because they heavily rely on 3rd party software (like SAP), which will not be updated.

All this dispite IE always being pre-installed

[linebackn]

What I find most interesting about the drop in IE usage is that this is happening in spite of IE still pre-installed on every single Windows computer and not being truly uninstallable (Even if the icon and tiny iexplore.exe are removed, which is all the Win7 add/remove feature does, 99% of it is sill there and can be fully embedded by applications)

This means a huge number of people are going to the trouble of obtaining and installing a third party browser, and ignoring that a browser is already installed. It would be interesting to see some statistics on where and how people are getting them.

I also have a feeling that for at least the short term, IE 9's inability to run on Windows XP might bite into IEs usage share. Firefox 4 will still run under 2000 and XP (and unofficially apparently even Windows 98 using a special piece of kernel extending software)