Internet Explorer market share under 60% and still falling

David Flynn
04 May 2010, 10:07 AM


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Microsoft’s once-mighty browser has lost 10% in market share from the beginning of last year as Chrome rockets up the charts.


Like the Windows operating system and Office suite, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser used to be considered unassailable. It was the de facto standard, it shipped on almost every new PC – what could go wrong?

But the browser’s share of the Web has steadily dropped in the face of competition from all sides, with market monitors Net Applications reporting that April is the worst month yet for Internet Explorer – and the best for the ‘alternative browser’ brigade.


Web browser market share as at April 2010 (data and chart courtesy of Net Applications)

Internet Explorer’s browser share has dipped just below the embarrassing 60% watermark to 59.95%, according to the latest data – a far cry from two years ago, when IE was the dominant browser with a 77.63% stake on the Web.

Chrome has enjoyed the largest gains, rocking up from 3.93% to 6.73% in the past six months. Chrome’s success has also come at the expense of Firefox, which now sits at 24.59% but has actually lost ground since its high of 24.72% in November last year.

Apple’s Safari has made only marginal gains, up from 4.36% in November 2009 to 4.72% in April 2010.


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Tin (Regular user):

The same applies to the OS market apparently - Windows has fallen nearly 2% in the year. It appears the users abandoning Windows are not all heading to Apple aswell, with only 1% growth between OSX and iPhoneOS.

04 May 2010, 10:24 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Phred (User):

Quoting Tin:
users abandoning Windows

When you have to go looking for drivers for just about every device you own, have to wade through Windows' draconian activation process; Activate or else you can't use your product you paid for, no wonder everyone is jumping ship, whether it be to an Apple or Linux based OS.

Same argument goes to IE, it's an over weight security nightmare trying to be, and do too much all at the same time, thats where Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Opera are gaining ground, they're designed to do one thing really well, surf the internet.


04 May 2010, 1:20 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

Quoting Phred:
When you have to go looking for drivers for just about every device you own


Or in the case of people supporting others - every device that comes across your desk. I particularly hate finding wireless drivers or getting Bluetooth to work. Both are far easier in Linux now that Windows!

04 May 2010, 1:30 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Fornax (User):

I don't know why opera isn't more popular its such a good browser and normally where the most inovative ideas come from.

04 May 2010, 10:46 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

plutonium210 (User):

Quoting Fornax:
I don't know why opera isn't more popular

Agreed!
FF, IE, Safari and even Chrome are such resource hogs.




04 May 2010, 11:36 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

Quoting plutonium210:
FF, IE, Safari and even Chrome are such resource hogs.


So is Vista, but that didn't stop most people...

04 May 2010, 12:27 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

doofus (New user):

How is 60% market share embarrassing?

04 May 2010, 1:59 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

When you compare it to the previous near 100% market share it's pretty lame. Especially as it continues to fall.

04 May 2010, 2:12 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

AlexF (User):

When was IE near 100% - when its only competitor was AOL's brain-dead Netscape?
Each of the three Windows browsers (Firefox, IE and Chrome) are offering pretty much what others are offering, so, why shouldn't use be split based on people's preference for colours of the menus? (D'oh Firefox 3.6 "Personas")
When it comes to browsers, people are sheep.

04 May 2010, 3:57 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

djsflynn (APC staff):

When IE once had as close as you could get to _total_ market share, but now more than one person in every three uses another browser - and with IE losing 10% in less than 18 months, with another 10% lost in the year prior to that - while a browser that wasn't even in existence until late 2008 is mainly responsible for your losses..? That's embarrassing. Just ask the people running the IE team at Redmond!

04 May 2010, 2:18 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

doofus (New user):

OK, maybe I needed to be more specific. Why is 60% embarrassing? Would it not be embarrassing at 61%? As you said, they are relatively huge losses to date? My issue is with the number, not with the statement.

I still like how the IE team sends the Mozilla foundation a congratulations cake each time they release a .0 version! I guess in some way they value the competition?

For those that haven't seen it:
http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-with-love/ and http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/06/sweet-plugin-microsoft-cake-20-for-firefox-3/

05 May 2010, 7:16 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Raindog (User):

Quoting doofus:
OK, maybe I needed to be more specific. Why is 60% embarrassing?

Well think about it for a few seconds! Windows still ships with IE loaded and ready to roll. And yet 40% (and growing) of Windows users choose to go to the effort of downloading and installing a 3rd party browser and the not inconsiderable effort of downloading IE.

MS lost it's way when they took the arrogant stance of setting their own non compliant standards.

Quoting doofus:
My issue is with the number, not with the statement.

Well just wait around, I'd guess that 60% will settle at around 33% before too much longer.



05 May 2010, 8:45 AM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Sp33d d3mon (User):

Ah, I remember using Netscape back in the day.. when we had 28.8Kbps dialup :) I've used FF on my Windows PC ever since it came out though, but I use Safari on my Mac. Most light browsing I do on my iPod though :D

04 May 2010, 7:03 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Anonymousewiuu2945u389 (User):

Oh well. It's not like IE8 is that good compared to the competition - too slow and buggy. The only reason I'm using it is becuase I managed to crash Firefox and haven't botherd repairing it. Although when I swap to Vista, it's Firefox 99% of the time...

04 May 2010, 7:24 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

agami (New user):

It all started with ie4, when MS in their limited wisdom decided to integrate the web browser into the OS. Since then the responsible teams have been kept busy by constantly needing to address security issues, after all 95% of businesses used their browser.

During this time Firefox and others based on mozilla gecko, Safari and Chrome and others based on webkit, and Opera have transformed from mere web browsers into web application clients.

Learning from its mistakes Microsoft should de-couple ie from the OS, make it multi-platform, and make it extensible, and they just might save it. The operative word in that sentence is 'learning'.

04 May 2010, 7:24 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

AlexF (User):

It all started with ie4, when MS in their limited wisdom decided to integrate the web browser into the OS.

IE came on OS disk, but it was never part of the kernel. It made sense to include IE on disk because its DLLs, like the Trident rendering engine was used by built-in applications like Outlook Express.

Microsoft should de-couple ie from the OS, make it multi-platform, and make it extensible, and they just might save it.
I believe none of Windows 7 is dependent on any IE-specific DLLs any more. Even Outlook is now using Word rendering engine rather than Trident.

07 May 2010, 2:06 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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