IE9 And Firefox Launches Fail To Attract New Users

Despite the hullabaloo and fanfares heralding the launch of new browsers from Microsoft and Mozilla, nothing has really changed. Although there have been great claims of massive download rates, the overall market is as moribund as ever it has been.

The avalanche of self-promoting superlatives attending the launches – faster performance, enhanced features, richer graphics – the latest metrics from independent researchers show that the overall percentages have changed but a few fractions of a percent. It appears that defections almost equal adoptions and that the bulk of the hundreds of millions of browser downloads have been upgrades.

Small Downward Shift For Top Two Browsers

According to Net Applications’ NetMarketshare statistics, both Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla Firefox have lost share to Google Chrome and Apple Safari. The movement marks a continuing slow decline over many months for both leaders.

Microsoft is possibly less concerned than Mozilla because IE9, the latest version of its browser is aimed at Windows 7 and Vista and these have far less operating system market share than Windows XP. Firefox 4, on the other hand, is aimed at all versions of Windows and Mozilla would have been seeking better results.

Apple Safari gained half a percentage point to reach its best position yet with 7.2 percent of the market. Chrome did almost as well with a climb from 11.5 to 11.9 percent. No real cause for celebration as it would take another 20 months at least for either to reach Firefox’s 21.6 percent share and seven years to approach Microsoft’s lofty 55.1 percent.

It is natural for Microsoft to look to the good rather than dwelling on the losses made by all browser versions except IE 9. Thanks to the new browser being included as a Windows Upgrade option from April 18, IE9 usage increased by 1.4 percent over March’s figures to 2.4 of all browsers used last month. Despite this growth, overall IE figures were 0.8 percent down.

Net Applications bases its figures on visitors to 40,000 Websites.