There is a lot of discussion amongst the web design and development community about the future of Internet Explorer in general (an area we covered in the post ‘Sticking up for Internet Explorer’) and more specifically whether to continue designing with IE6 users in mind, with campaigns being set up to move people away from IE6 and magazine articles calling for designers to boycott IE6. The browser wars are also hotting up with Microsoft launching IE8, Apple launching Safari 4.0 and Mozilla launching FireFox 3.5 in 2009. In light of all this we thought we would take a more detailed look at which browsers our site’s visitors have been using since the turn of the year and the results are very interesting…
In January Internet Explorer was the most used browser with a 50.41% share of visits and Firefox was second coming in with 10% less traffic at 40.63% of the share. However, every month so far this year we have seen a steady decline in Internet Explorer users and an increase for FireFox, Safari and Chrome. IE nearly lost the number 1 spot in |March, hanging on by 0.4%, but was finally dislodged by FF in April and has not looked like reclaiming this position since.
It is ironic that IE’s decline started at around the same time as IE8 was taken out of Beta and made available for general download and it slipped in to 2nd place the same month the final version was released. If we look at the browser version being used in more detail we can see IE6 usage is on the decline although nowhere near at the rate of IE7 suggesting the majority of IE8 users are upgrading from IE7 rather than IE6 (IE6 users really do like their browser! A note to the person who used IE 4.0 in May, please upgrade to something else, anything!)
From the data in the first graph we can see that IE7 and IE6 users are jumping ship and moving over to one of the alternatives rather than simply upgrading.
To be fair, our site’s visitors and users are inherently more technically minded than the average internet user and more involved in the development of the internet as an entity in itself and I would argue that FireFox is more likely to be used by this group. However, although the global statistics for web browser usage still show Internet Explorer is the most used browser the decline of Internet Explorer is still clear as is the rise of FireFox, Chrome and Safari.
Is your website seeing a similar trend and what are your thoughts on how Microsoft can reclaim their dominance of the market (or even if that is possible now)?
Note: The data used in this post is taken from the top 5 browsers for each month. The percentage figures represent their share of that total and not the total percentage share of the entire site/ all browsers.
Related posts: Sys Admin’s Favourite FireFox add-ons
Hmm who knows Microsoft is doing now a competition for IE8 for $10,000 if people are able to find the hidden treasure.
You will find that a lot of people will just install the browser to enter the competition.
I personally use all three browsers, I use IE as my default browser for email and links, firefox for my daily sites preloaded on the tabs and management of users and google I like cause of its engine for blocking popups and separate threaded tabs, use it as well for preloaded tabs for forums and news sites to keep myself updated.
Maybe that is a big factor; people are using multiple browsers now depending on what they are doing. It would be interesting to see download statistics as well, it could be the same number of IE installations occur but the user is splitting their time with other browsers now rather than using one exclusively.
IE8 is on the critical section of Windows Updates so you will find that the number of installations would be almost worldwide (forced of course).
Opera has now created a p2p browser.
But who knows if people will start using opera, I know of some people that do and most of them are developers and they pretty much only use it for testing to see if their programs will be compatible with different browsers.
Oh, nice to see Firefox is topping our usage charts! It’d be interesting to know if this is applicable across the board for companies in the web hosting industry (I imagine it is).
@David,
I’ve tried Opera. It was perfectly fine; seemed more responsive than Firefox (may have just been a “grass is greener on the other side” thing, though)… but the lack of addons kept me using Firefox really.
When you said: “I personally use all three browsers, I use IE as my default browser for email and links, firefox for my daily sites preloaded on the tabs”. Why do you use IE for links/email instead of just Firefox for that too? Just quite curious!
Cheers.
The problem with being No.1 out there for so long is there is only one way to go! Every one snipes at you and all design to improve on what you do. Which is a good thing.
My experience is Techno weenies use FireFox generally, the great unwashed use MSIE (whatever version) because that is what their computer came loaded with. There is a general fear of changing anything, in case they murder their pride and joy, and if their system is updated at anytime it is because the automatic updates is switched on
Not a fan of IE8 like FireFox it has java issues and the pages display differently. I suppose it is just another argument for CSS over Tables for layout. But you can force IE8 back into IE7 mode with a bit of code in the meta tags which I am doing whilst I teach myself CSS. (UGH!) The problem here is, all told I have a few thousand pages spread over 15 websites. Bring back Win95! life was so simple then.
Paul
bout time their monopoly was broken, they have taken advantage of people for long enough…
the ability to choose your browser in windows 7 will surely help in reducing their monopoly.
I am sure all webmasters have faced the problems trying to get websites to work with IE and this has often led to the exclusion of other browser, have seen so many sites that said “best viewed with Internet Explorer xxx” – this is not the way the web should be working, browsers should conform to standards we should not have to conform to THEIR standards.
Sooner they lose out the better, far as I am concerned !!
I find it strange that very few people complained about the virtual monopoly enjoyed by Netscape all those years ago. Is it because MS took advantage of their dominant OS position or was it clever market positioning?
The next issue we face is the potential monopoly threatened by Google Chrome. Many people seem to view Google as a beneficent organisation but it is in fact a very profitable business which is constantly vying for market share and further profit opportunities. Through their share of the Search Engine market Google could quite possibly have a browser monopoly within the next 3 years, especially in light of the blurring between the lines of web and local application services.
Karl
p.s. I’d like to point out that I’m neither a fan of MS or Google, I just want a fair playing field on the internet (as I’m sure most of us do).
Hiya Richard,
Nice to know there is another Brown in here
With response to your message, I use IE for emails and links, its because I use Live Messenger so when a new email pops in, its just a matter of clicking on it so it takes me straight to the inbox of hotmail.
While if I set firefox as my default browser, then I would then need to enter my password for hotmail everything, as when MSN parses the URL to the browser, the browser wont automatically login to Hotmail but rather kick you out and as for login details.
Regards,
David
One reason for continued IE6 usage is that many antiquated web sites require its use. My former employer (Nortel Networks) despite supposedly supporting standards and the latest technology required employees to use IE6 to access most internal websites (e.g. to book holiday or sickness absence, claim expenses and look at ones pension) – kind of mandated IE6. (though Firefox with IE Tab just about managed to cope with many of the sites).
Fortunately they did allow use of ‘unsupported’ Firefox to deal with the rest of the world.
See also recent ‘Register’ article about a similar situation at ‘Orange’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/08/orange_and_ie6/