Internet Explorer Increases Market Share for Second Consecutive Month

Arstechnica did a nice write-up. What is really interesting is how fragmented the browser share is by version numbers. I mean I can see why IE8 is the most popular version of IE all the XP users are stuck with only IE6/7/8 and XP is still the most dominant OS. Firefox is all over the place in this regard, I think a lot of that is due to the memory leak issues with FF 4-10 that kept a lot of folks on the 3.6.x chain. Chrome seems to have done the best as far as forcing folks to update to the current version.

I wonder when ISPs will start checking for outdated software before they let you access the internet.

Since Net Applications numbers continually conflict with every other source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Historical_usage_share), I don't think much can be gathered from their numbers other than that they obviously include stats from a bunch of non-user server farms that have IE installed by default.

The other thing you have to consider is that most corporations use IE because they can control it easier. That is a lot of computers and people who have no alternative but IE.

I haven't been used IE for a long, although I the IE9 is always sit there in my computer. Don't like IE browser really, From my experience, it opens page slowly compared with the chrome, firefox or even Avant browser I used. Maybe it's just my illusion, but the ubiquitous script errors make me angry, I don't think I will back to IE any more.

Not as an advertiser or anything but I get all my sound gear from these guys as does my brother who is professional and it sounds like a cool event if your close to the location.

http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/gearfest2012/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gearfest12-2

@rapid1 Sweetwater is a great source (when I can get them to ship to a relative's in the US). Unfortunately I have problems getting them to ship to Canada :( so I use zzounds most of the time.

On topic.

IE sucks. Period. In 2012 I can't copy a URL and then "paste and go" with one click? Really? Add the terrible UI and security (whose bright idea was it to hard-code it into windows? notice how many of the windows update patches are to patch vulnerabilities in IE?)...Those numbers are so because the millions who are still on XP cannot use any higher than IE8. Add in the corporate IT people who hate updating because they are afraid of losing their "control"/having to learn a somewhat new system (which is not that different), and many people browse from work, as they spend most of their waking hours there.

Another thing to keep in mind is that websites read what your browser is by some sort of javascript. If you have blockers in place (many chrome and FF users do) then that's a potentially large amount of users that are not countable. That'll skew numbers even more.

Statcounter's global stats (http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-daily-20080701-20111105) tell a rather different story - IE continuing to fall and now at slightly more than 40 % market share, while both Firefox (falling) and Google Chrome (rising) at over 26 %. Here in Europe, FF and IE are tied at around 33 % (both declining, FF slightly, IE at a much faster rate), while Chrome is rising rapidly and now enjoys a market share of over 25 %. The answer one gets to statistical questions seems to depend greatly on whom one chooses to ask....

Henri

IE still exists?

Whoa!

I haven't used that program in a very long time and I don't miss it either.

The problem, Neil, is of course that that IE is bundled with Windows, which still enjoys a quasi-monopoly on both desktops and on notebooks. After Firefox had demonstrated that it was, indeed, possible to bust this monopoly, the European Commission finally got the courage to do something about this competition-inhibiting practice and fined MS over a thousand million € and, perhaps more importantly, imposed an obligatory browser-choice icon on new versions of Windows sold in Europe. This meant that even the least knowledgeable sections of the computer-pruchasing public were exposed to the notion of the web browser and that IE not wasn't synonymous with the Internet, but wasn't necessarily the best path to it. This, of course, didn't happen in North America, which is, I suspect, one of the reasons that IE still enjoys a greater market share on that continent - around 49 % (http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-daily-20080701-20111105) than here in Europe....

Henri 

With me, I remember all of the times that my PC was compromised by IE running on it. (lack of security features) There was security breach after breach for a long time. It got to be old.

It pissed me off.

So I went to Firefox and saw relief right away. This was before the EU got after them.

It was a long time before hackers started going after the FF browser. Firefox add-on's helped out quite a bit too.

So IE has been ignored by me for years. But seriously, it's not been a problem for me at all.

Well IE6 does have a lot on its conscience - to the degree that web browsers (or the companies/foundations behind them) have consciences - it's been the vector used for many a security breach. Like you, I never use it (as a matter of fact, I don't have much of a choice as I very rarely use Windows, much prefering Ubuntu on my boxes), but somehow I doubt that either one of us is particularly representative of computer users in our respective necks of the woods....

Henri

Ubuntu Huh?

I dig it. I would be using that exclusively if it had all of my favorite games ported to it.

I like how almost any PC will run it and work great with it on there.

Catch 22 : gamers don't run Linux/Ubuntu because not enough games are ported to the OS - and game developers don't port games to the OS because not enough gamers run it. In the words of the late great Kurt Vonnegut, so can it go....

Henri