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Internet Explorer Use Slips Below 55%
rfc1394 writes with this snippet from an Infoworld report:
"Internet Explorer's market share continues to drop like a rock. Net Applications published its numbers for May, and Internet Explorer's total share declined yet again, from 55.11 percent in April to 54.27 percent in May, a drop of [0.84 percent] in one month. Contrast that with Google's Chrome, which rose from 11.94 percent in April to 12.52 percent in May, an increase of [0.58 percent]. In the past year, IE's share of browser usage has dipped from 60.32 percent to 54.27 percent. How long before IE usage drops below 50%?'"
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I've read elsewhere that it's already below 50% on weekends. Either way, good news for web designers everywhere.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
60.32-54.27 = 6.05
6.05/12=0.504
4.28/0.504 = 8.49
I give it about eight and a half months.
Hooray!
As soon as IE loses majority I imagine it's remaining share will drop at an accelerated pace.
Champagne, lightly clad women, and music!!!
IE is dropping like a rock. That sounds very nice.
Thanks for the info! It gave me an excuse to open that left-over bottle of champagne!
You're off by a factor of 100.
A bit of competition is always good. That way nobody falls asleep and we will see regular updates with new features. The obvious problem is of-course feature bloat: I predict that in the year 2016 all browsers, Firefox 27, Chrome 27 and IE 32, will be so filled with useless junk that a lone, angry, nerd will create a new lean&mean browser, with just one feature: render standard compliant HTML7 pages with 100% accuracy.
According to Wikipedia a Phoenix can rise from the ashes again and again. The future will be the same as the past...
This is great news, and the change is definitely non-trivial, but saying it's dropping like a rock seems like a bit of an exaggeration. At this rate it's going to be about another 5-10 months before it drops below 50%, and at the current rate it will take Chrome about five and a half _years_ to get above 50%. (Obviously it would pass by IE somewhere in the middle of that time frame, but i don't care to do the math now.)
Look at what happened to Android's market share in the last year or two, and counterpoise it with RIM. That's a bit more like the kind of change you could qualify as "dropping like a rock" or "rising meteorically," and even that's pushing it a bit IMHO.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
from 55.11 percent in April to 54.27 percent in May, a drop of 0.84 basis point in one month
That would be 0.84% or 84 basis points. 100bp = 1%.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wait a second... Isn't this the same Net Applications that is constantly criticized over it's OS market share figures that show Linux as less than 1%? Apparently only the statistics that show anti-Microsoft things can actually be accurate. I would be willing to bet if a submitter made a story showing how Net Applications showed Linux had dropped from .94% to .91% over the same period that it would be flamed to hell as being inaccurate, etc etc yet when it shows IE dropping market share their figures are 100% truth. lol hypocrisy.
Don't know about the rest of you, but I'd settle for over 50% of the market share.
Did someone just take freshman economics and want to dazzle us with his new vocabulary? Because, while technically correct, "basis points" is only commonly encountered when discussing finance. "Percentage points" fits in that sentence just fine.
And it's "basis points" not "basis point". Hat's off to Soulskill for the usual high quality editing.
Advice: on VPS providers
So it's dropped 84 basis points. Or 0.84 percentage points.
I think this shows that a huge percentage of Internet browsing is now coming from iPads, other tablets, iPhones and Android phones. Certainly pays to make your web site browser agnostic these days. I see many web sites that popup messages saying to install run Chrome or Firefox for a better browsing experience.
I'm assuming that by market share it's some globalish number of IE users and that because of this many users in foreign countries are using IE or something...My main issue for confusion comes from my experience having worked on two city websites, four websites for a major university and several small mom and pop company sites. From the analytics on each of these IE is always the least used browser, often times less than 25% of the users. Granted, I'm working with a small amount of fish in the ocean, but other webmasters I've worked with and talked to about this experience the same thing - so I guess my question is...where are all these IE users coming from and what sites are they going too?
Ave Molech Setting
Surely of more concern is that the number of Firefox users has stalled for the last year? In the same period Chrome has gained > 5% and it's rate is accelerating.
Is this just desktop numbers or are they including mobile? With the huge rise in people actively using mobile browsers(the majority of which are not MS), it could just be a case of the numbers being skewed because of these new devices and that all people really care about is what is easy to get to and use. They may still have IE only on their PC, but they just don't use it because they're surfing from their couch.
I just read that lynx is now taking the lead in web browsing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
I know this is YMMV source, but according to it, IE hit 50% in August of 2008.
I know how browsers are detected. It's about as scientific as a Slashdot poll.
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
For example:
What makes any one set of browser share statistics any better than any other?
TFA suggests otherwise.
Sure, changes in these low usage rates could have accounted for a decline in share as small as the 0.84% reported for IE. Still it's rather striking that mobiles only account for about three percent of browsers in use.
It looks like a few of Slashdot's servers decided to leave town early for the weekend today!
The recent /. article on what ails Microsoft is relevant here. They can no longer sustain their numbers as a regular, non-dominating competitor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg
Five years of rank stagnation of web technology thanks to IE's domination of the market, what I call the Great Languish.
Please do your part to remember the fiasco and to ward against it by discouraging monopolies both with your actions and your advice to others. If you're sticking with the dominant browser/platform because it's more comfortable than using the game-changing upstart, you're part of the problem.
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003
From: Concerned Netizen
To: Friends
Subject: browser war upset
I get the feeling that Microsoft is about to lose the browser war.
Everyone thought it was over.
http://mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/
Try it out:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.6.1/MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-win32.zip
Commoditize the platform. It's good for us all.
Google Analytics still shows IE at 85% share for my sites (Local government). Guess it all depends on the user base.
Posting as AC since every time I mention IE my karma plunges.
I was under the understanding that most IE users were stil using IE 6 because big corporations didn't want to go through the hassle of updating not only their Explorer, but also any other platform that was dependant on it. Microsoft has been on a crusade to convince its users to stop using IE6, going as far as dropping support and security fixes. Faced with the fact that they must abandon IE6 and adopt a new one, it's only natural that they would choose the "best" explorer there is out there, and by "best" I mean the one that better suits their needs. That may or may not be IE9.
Can any of this be credited to the fact that people are using many other non-microsoft OS devices? I wonder how many Windows users have abandoned using IE. Obviously, some have, but sometimes numbers can be misleading.
The average Internet user is fairly clueless.
The average clueless user doesn't go installing an alternative browser.
The idea that approaching 50% of Internet users are savvy enough to even consider an alternative browser, let alone choose one, is implausible.
Therefore I question the methodology.
Go download programs (especially free ones) and install them. Just as with toolbars, more and more programs try to install alternate browsers that set themselves as the default.
Perfect example, my mother called me and asked why IE looked so funny. Turns out she was using Chrome. I looked through the reliability manager (which tracks installs) and found out that she recently installed a new program that slipped on Chrome.
A similar thing happened with my sister and iTunes, which lead to her calling me about Safari.
That doesn't make sense.
The mobile space doesn't really have any firefox browsers, nor does it have IE browsers. If the decrease is due to the explosion in mobile devices, both would decrease. The fact that firefox isn't, means that if IE is holding steady, firefox must be increasing. If firefox is holding steady, IE must be decreasing. Attributing it to wholly to mobile apps cannot explain the behavior.
Besides, I think the importance of the mobile devices is being hugely overstated by most pundits and tech sites. Only about 20% of cellphone users have anything like a smartphone; and 25% of adults still don't even have a cellphone. It's an area that is still waiting for actual mainstream adoption. Just because you and your friends in IT have smartphones doesn't make it truly commonplace. What are the stats for most websites? I think generally, fewer than 5% of their hits are from mobile devices.
I've got a domain registered and use Google Apps for it. Due to changes Google made in Feburary 2011, I'm no longer able to have FF open my Domain Apps and Personal iGoogle pages at the same time. It forces me to log-out of the domain apps every time.
What I've found though is that IE9 works nicely with Google Apps and I now have it configured to deal with my business apps while keeping firefox for my personal browser.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
in soviet russia web Browses you .....
da da da dum indeed.
I think when you look at the chart and add the numbers together you get a different story. Sure IE has 54%, but if you add other MS properties like Pocket Internet Explorer and the Danger Web Browser you get a total of, oh, never mind.
On one end IE has worst experience for end user, and on the other it has poor developer environment. Your standard HTML/CSS compliant website may not work on IE well and on top of that, their debugging tool, I don't know what purpose it fulfill.
These stats could be a great relief for designers, if MS could learn from his downfall and make more user and developer friendly web browser.
Subject line says it all.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
"... they don't like ..." "... doesn't meet needs ..." Binary states? Black and white thinking is harmful. Though I realize you're being extreme for rhetorical effect. Anyway, no software is perfect.
When I chose to start using Firebird it wasn't a perfect browser. But it worked well, and I knew that small trade-off in function between Firebird and IE was an investment. And now it's paying off.
Your average person won't get this, I agree. But others see more clearly. And they'll invest some inconvenience now to get big rewards later. I'll guess you are smart enough to see the point behind choosing non-optimal software. And probably your friends, too. This is what I'm suggesting. When you see a good cause that can be supported with reasonable cost, do so and spread the word.
Always choosing software that works best for some application without regards to other important effects is like always choosing to eat donuts because they taste best. Juvenile and harmfully short-sighted.