Internet Explorer's Market Share Still Taking Hits
by Sam Dean - Feb. 03, 2009Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
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Recently, we covered benchmarks showing the Release Candidate for Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 8 browser seriously lagging open source browsers Firefox and Google Chrome. We also discussed Microsoft's acknowledgement that the European Commission may force it to see that alternative browsers to IE ship on new computers. Now, representing the latest blow for Internet Explorer, new research shows Microsoft's browser continuing to lose market share.
According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer's market share dropped from 68.15% in December to 67.55% in January. The market share freefall gets more dramatic when you look at longer slices of time, though. Net Applications'data shows IE at close to 75% market share as recently as March of last year.
Google Chrome still has only just over 1% of the browser market, but I expect its share to grow as extensions arrive for it, and as the Mac and Linux versions show up in the first half of this year. Firefox's share is now over 21% of the browser market, according to Net Applications, representing a true open source success story.
When the final version 3.1 of Firefox comes out in a few weeks (it's already very speedy in beta), and Google begins to fill in some of the gaps in its Chrome strategy, expect to see Internet Explorer's market share dip further. Here's a look at NetApplications' latest market share findings:
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