News
IE Market Share Slip Slidin' Away
StatCounter: Microsoft browser usage dips below 50 percent worldwide.
- By Chris Paoli
- November 01, 2010
Internet Explorer use dropped to 49.4 percent in October, according to Web analytics company StatCounter.
In contrast to the October 2010 result, StatCounter previously found that the Microsoft Web browser had a 58.0 percent stake in the market one year ago in October. Internet Explorer competitors include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and the Opera Internet browser, to name a few.
Internet Explorer is still well ahead of second-place Firefox at 31.3 percent. However, the October results appear to be the first time that IE use has dipped below 50 percent, according to StatCounter's data.
"This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, in a statement. "Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67 percent."
Although StatCounter shows the Internet Explorer browser owning less than half the worldwide market, it still has a 52.3 percent share in North America, with Firefox behind it at 27.2 percent.
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The North American decline for IE, year-over-year, wasn't as drastic as the worldwide drop -- IE use decreased only 3.6 percentage points. The Mozilla Firefox browser experienced an even bigger drop in the North American market, with a loss of 4 percentage points compared with its October 2009 number.
Safari and Chrome appear to be the two big beneficiaries of the diminishing use of IE and Firefox. They held 9.1 percent and 9.9 percent of the browser market, respectively, in September. However, StatCounter shows wild swings in October, pegging Safari at 4.6 percent and Chrome at 12.0 percent.
While StatCounter's analysis of the browser market is a good indication of trends, it isn't 100 percent accurate. The company compiles its findings from a sample of 15 billion page views over 3 million Web sites per month.
Stat Owl, a competing Web tracking company, had the IE browser finishing off the month of September with 62.7 percent of the market.
In related IE browser usage news, Net Applications, a California-based Web tracking company, shows IE 9 had 0.3 percent of the worldwide market since its release to public beta on Sept. 15.