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:good riddance

[click2005]

MS will never acknowledge anything except that IE9 is better/faster/safer/blingier than the other browsers.

The point is that with IE9, all of the major browsers aren't that bad really.
Thats the way it should be. Your choice in browser shouldn't matter.

Re:good riddance

[hedwards]

Indeed, but until IE 6, 7 and 8 are out of the way, it's likely still going to matter. It really should be a matter of personal preference, at least that's what I thought standards compliance was for.

Hmm..interesting

[Lunix Nutcase]

I find it rather interesting that the source for this figure is the same StatCounter that the same people cheering this figure about IE will claim is wildly inaccurate due to the fact that it shows Linux with like a 1 or 2% market share. But since in this case it shows something negative about Microsoft (IE market share, Windows XP vs Vista & 7 market share) it is taken as holy gospel truth. Hypocrisy. Isn't it grand?

Re:Hmm..interesting

[timeOday]

I agree counting of this nature is somewhat dubious since it's hard to sample the web uniformly. That said, the milestone matters less than the trend, which is most likely reflected accurately so long as they don't change how they count. In other words, it doesn't really matter whether the absolute percentage is now 50%, 60%, or 40%; what's certain is the web monoculture Microsoft wanted so badly and nearly achieved at the height of their power has failed. And that's a good thing.

No real increase for firefox...

[daid303]

Firefox has been around 30% for the last year, while IE dropped 10% in the same time, and Chrome gained 10%.

If this trend continues then it might balance out at 30/30/30/10 for IE/Firefox/Chrome/Other. Which should be good for everyone I think. There is no holy browser (except lynx), so a good balance of users should make sites more standard compliant in the end.

Depends on whom you ask

[asdfington]

Measuring browser market share is kind of a tricky task since any one site can only tell you who visits *their* site, or the sites whose stats they aggregate.
Check out the stats here:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table and you'll see that depending on whom you ask, IE has anywhere between 48 and 63% of the market share. Stats from sites that cater to developers (notably w3schools are skewed heavily* towards Firefox and Chrome, mainstream sites towards IE. Then there's the factors that lead to over-estimation, under-estimation... it's a sticky wicket for sure.

I say look at the aggregate results. Then I mention I have no idea how those aggregates are tabulated and weighted (Do W3Schools' stats have the same weight as WeTrack10mSites.com?). The only thing you can know for sure (more or less), is the traffic statistics on *your* site, which, to the developer, should be pretty much the only ones that matter. Pro tip: explain that last sentence to your clients.

*I don't really know if something can be "skewed heavily," but what the heck, you only live once, right?

Re:good riddance

[Bert64]

IE9 is still a problem tho...
When IE6 came out it wasn't all that bad compared to its peers, just like IE9 today. However, if everyone moves over to IE9 and other browsers die out then you can kiss goodbye to any updates, IE9 will stagnate and become the new IE6.
Market share of any browsers other than IE should be as high as possible, otherwise MS will just screw the web like they have done before.