Internet Explorer Falls Below 50% Market Share Mark

By | November 2, 2011 | 52 Comments


Months and months after the continuous Internet Explorer’s market share decline, Microsoft’s web browser has finally breached the 50% mark and now sits at the 49.58%, down from 50.97% (1.39 point decrease).

As far as other web browsers go, it looks like Firefox is going to the opposite direction, as its market share has increase by 0.14 point, up from 21.06% to 21.20%.

Google Chrome continues its uptrend and is now up by another 1.42 point, increasing its share from 15.17% 16.59%. If growth continues, we should see it approaching 20% mark in the second quarter of 2012.

Thanks to Apple’s handheld device sales, Safari is on the roll with a 0.51 point increase in the market share, up from 8.03% to 8.54%.

Just like Internet Explorer, Opera’s market share continues to suffer as it now reached January, 2010 levels, down from 1.58%, 1.49%, (0.09 point decrease).

So here you have it folks, with the exception of Firefox, there aren’t really any changes in the overall trend.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • greenbutter

    looks like chrome could be the new internet explorer

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4805023 Amit Kumar

      In popularity?  …no it is only at 16.5%
      In bugginess? … no it is fairly standards compliant.

      What do you mean?

      • http://www.facebook.com/Jeffery.Dempsey Jeff Dempsey

        It’s on the rise, it could become the new standard.  That’s what I think he’s saying.

        • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

          What’s a bad thing since the standard must be the cross-browser Web standards.

      • Pulmonological

        IE gets a boost from companies who force IE on its employees.  I dont know anyone who uses IE at home.

        • http://twitter.com/dtg295 Jon

          I know one and you’ll never guess how old he is!

          • Anonymous

            A million

    • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

      Now if only Chrome was pre-installed on Windows machines…
      …it would make me hate it even more.

      Although Chrome is a better browser it’s still used by a lot of idiots. But not all users are stupid, those who use it deliberately have their reasons.

      • Jbadlu

        Your a retard. browser preference has nothing to do with being an idiot.

        • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

          I said people who use Chrome deliberately have their reasons. A lot of people normally download it just because it has “Google” in it.

  • przemo_li

    I think that Chrome will face stone wall sun. It will be much further than Firefox own (yeah IE6 is a bit smaller this time, and MS do not provide any solution for XP worth noting).

    But business will still be against (just from fear of some apps breaking with some Chrome update).

    Also this wired notion that IE6 make imposible to use social web-apps…..

    I hope Chrome will force IEx to retreat as much as humanly possible, and that FF will also gain a bit on this.

    Tell whatever you want, but only FF and Chrome try to make web surfing the same on every platform they support. (MS and Apple are interested in prime support of their own newest platforms)

    Something important when ppl start to use diverse computation solutions (wherever we call them all PC or not ;P)

    • http://www.rudivisser.com/ Rudi Visser

      Actually, both Chrome and Firefox have rendering differences (and Chrome specifically in it’s JS engine) cross-platform…

  • Mikah

    It was inevitable once Microsoft decided not to release IE 9 on Windows XP 

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4805023 Amit Kumar

      Microsoft’s reasoning is pretty solid.  This is inevitable.  People won’t pay to upgrade and XP seems to be working for them.  Little do they know how much better life would be.

      • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

        Even though Windows 7 has a ton of bells and whistles from Vista it’s pretty rock solid. Maybe more so than XP.

        MS dropped XP with IE9 so people could actually be bothered to upgrade their precious IE.

  • http://twitter.com/Andylee_Sato Andylee_Sato

    IE is going to continue losing market share as XP is still out there and will be there for quite some time (at least a few years). 

    Fx is not going to win too much market share… I think they may are going to maintain the share they have now, but not more… 

    … So the big winner is Chrome. Google will rock the browser world for the years to come.
    Safari is only going to be so successful as long as Apple continues it’s run and I don’t see that happening.

    Opera will maintain it’s 1-2 percent of the market, which proved to be enough for them to be profitable. Also they are shifting away from browser making as their primary goal towards a broader sortiment of services (Ads, mail, social network….)

    • Anonymous

      I wish Opera could get a larger market share. Maybe if they buy out some ad companies, they will get a better marketing platform for their browser. 

      • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

        They need to work on web sites stability and compatibility first :)

        • arepo

          Don’t blame Opera, blame the website designers.

          • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

            As you can see, not taking responsibility and blaming others leads to the continuous market share decline :)

          • St.Claude

            Damn right.

          • Anonymous

            Oh Opera has its bugs.

            Like the infamous never loading last element.

            Or rendering pages like garbage.

            Not to mention their JS parser or what ever it is slow to kick in.

            http://500px.com/photo/191592                    < —— Right click the image as fast as possible. It takes a second or two for the JS bubble to kick in

          • http://twitter.com/Andylee_Sato Andylee_Sato

            the JS problem is being targeted and will no longer be there with Opera 12 (look at the snapshots).

            agree with the rest…

          • Anonymous

            I should note. Done with latest snapshot

        • Anonymous

          Their new Ragnarök HTML5 parser (in Opera Next) has already fixed some site bugs I’ve known. But, as arepo said, many of the website incompatibility bugs are due to the website designers’ malformed HTML. True, some of the responsibility rests on Opera, and they should take it, but there are some things they can’t really help like browser sniffing.

          It’s important to note that the total number of Opera users is not decreasing – just its market share. 

  • Apriorimeister

    According to statcounter and clicky Opera has actually gained some, be it fairly insignificant market share. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201109-201110 http://www.getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/

  • FPM

    I USED TO BE A HOMELESS RODEO CLOWN BUT NOW I AM A WORLD CLASS MAGICIAN !

  • Astro86

    Wait, some one out there still uses XP? what are you? A freak’n dinasaur? Update your OS man! Win7, Linux, hell 2 cans and a piece of string is better than XP!

    Anyway, IE9 is pretty good. Once it gets some real developer tools that do not require VS2010 or allows people to create custom plug-ins (ala FireFox) it will be pretty decent.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love my FF, but let’s not trash IE9 just because it was written by M$…

    • http://www.facebook.com/Jeffery.Dempsey Jeff Dempsey

      It’s ok if you ignore how slow it is.  Or how it says it supports html5 but not really.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2008795 SJ Hosin

      Sorry, XP was pretty solid, so not sure what you’re talking about. You shouldn’t upgrade just for the sake of upgrading, if something works for you. 

      I’m not a fan of Vista, and haven’t test driven Win7, but won’t be in a hurry to upgrade just because.

      • Anonymous

        You are so old that you couldn’t possibly have the incentive to upgrade. 

        Doing so might injure or break something.

        Best of luck.

    • http://profiles.google.com/xuimod Ma Hu

      A lot of people in developing nations still use XP.  This is because their hardware tends to be quite antiquated (but it still works) so for their hardware, Windows XP is the best OS.  

      Also, these same people tend not to care much or follow news about the latest version of an operating system created by a company in a foriegn English speaking country…. because they have more important things to worry about (like feeding and providing shelter for their families).

      • Chase Lee

        “so for their hardware, Windows XP is the best OS”

        I disagree since a Linux distribution is more leightweight and performant and would receive free updates.

        • http://profiles.google.com/xuimod Ma Hu

          Its more than just Linux being lightweight….. which OS is more practical to learn in the long term?  Windows wins hands down.

          If I were new to computers, of working age and living in a developing country, I would without question prefer to learn Windows over Linux.  With the exception of IT work (where almost everyone already knows Windows well), using Windows is a much more marketable skill.  Windows is much more the corporate standard than Linux will ever be (even in the developing world).

  • Anonymous

    IE is the only one that functions for all the websites I use for work.  BTW, I thought everyone is browsing the web with an iPad now.  

    • http://www.facebook.com/Jeffery.Dempsey Jeff Dempsey

      that is not true at all.  Since each iteration of IE is different then the next many websites are not compatible.  The only reason designer & developers make it compatible is because of their market share.

      • Marc

        You couldn’t be more wrong.  IE ships with the rendering engine from IE5,7,8,&9 built in.  Devs can specify which platform they want to target via meta tags on the page (to enable support for legacy sites) but any page with a valid DOCTYPE will be the most recent mode by default.

        • Kevin Kragenbrink

          Ah, but they’re imperfect, those rendering engines. How IE9 renders IE8 is not exactly how IE8 renders IE8, and those differences have come up in my workplace rather consistently.  We have to use virtualboxes for our work.

  • Anonymous

    I understand website are not compatible are the issue, but like I stated IE is the only one that will work for me at work.  Same reason I use Windows, none of my software works with Apple or Linux.  So, wouldn’t it hard to base numbers on something that say certain group of people just wouldn’t be able to use?

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      These are a very small group of people.

  • IE & Opera FanBoy

    Its unfortunate to see both of my favorite browsers are going down in market share. 
    : IE needs to convince more users. IE has everything that normal user needs.
    : Opera needs to support lot more standards (Atleast for me, Opera should support ADFS).

    • Dean

      trollert

      • Anonymous

        People are trolls because of difference of opinion?

        Sad.

  • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

    I still lol when people download Chrome and tell me,

    “I don’t see the difference.”

    XD

  • Armin

    I would drop Chrome for Opera or Firefox if the latter two finally implemented multiprocess browsing. They just aren’t as responsive as Chrome in their current forms.

    • Anonymous

      One thing I hate about chrome is that sandbox thing. I shouldn’t have 30+ processors for just one program

      • Armin

        You shouldn’t? What does it bother you? It makes Chrome far more responsive than Firefox or Opera and strangely (but also pleasantly) enough, my fan doesn’t go crazy either.

        • Anonymous

          Sorry but the only browser that crashes is ironically Chrome.

          Uh-Oh something went wrong.

          It is just too many processors vs tabs. 

          Now I have 3 tabs and 11 processors. Ludicrous.

          Applications:

          Chrome – 136MB

          Background Processors:

          Chrome – 96MB
          Chrome – 13MB
          Chrome – 7MB
          Chrome – 7MB
          Chrome – 18MB………………so on and so forth

          • Mikah

            Various builds of Chrome have crashed for me over the past year & its always been the whole browser but Opera remains the crash king for me , doesn’t bother me though a quick restart & I’m back browsing with all my tabs including the history I probably lose on average 4 seconds.

          • Anonymous

            Chrome has crashed only the tab

            Opera tbh crashes more than it used to.

            IE is rock solid.

            When I used IE, it feels like I am using the internet. It feels integrated.

            That iconic ‘click’ sound sends a shiver down my spine.

            The others feel like toys that are going to break any second. 

            But what do I know.

          • Mikah

            IE is solid and so it should be only on Vista & Windows 7 & with hardly any options or features.

  • JT

    I don’t give a shit what browser anyone uses. To each their own. I just hope the browsers continue to upgrade its support for modern technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and ECMAscript 5. I’m a UI Developer, and nothing is more heart breaking than opening my beautifully thought out interface in IE. IE9 is better but let’s hope they actually accomplish something with IE10.

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