Internet Explorer Adoption Drops Below 90%
By Jeremy C. Wright, Staff Writer
Tuesday, 23 November 2004 17:20 EST
Microsoft’s popular Internet Explorer web browser has, for the first time in half a decade, dropped below 90% market share, a recent study of OneStat’s users shows.
OneStat is one of the largest statistics providers in the world, as its stats tracking program covers more than 50,000 websites. The new results put total IE consumption at an increasingly dismal 88.8%. The suite of Mozilla based browsers – including the shining star FireFox – are now commanding a 7.35% market share.
While IE’s share is still massive, and Mozilla’s share is still small, the 6 month shift is drastic. In May, OneStat’s numbers showed Internet Explorer at roughly 94% and Mozilla at an abysmal 2.5%.
Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com, said: "It seems that people are switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's new Firefox browser. The total usage share of Microsoft declined 5 percent and the total usage share of Mozilla increased 5 per cent."
The decline prompted the software giant to contact clients, urging them to think twice before switching to free alternatives to its own products.
The news came as Mozilla recorded 5 million downloads of its new Firefox browser. Firefox 1.0, a descendent of Netscape, the former market leader, was released earlier this month. Earlier versions of the software had gained a cult following by supporters who have claimed it is more reliable than Microsoft's.
Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's release manager, said: "We're seeing a much swifter uptake for 1.0 than for the preview release, which took more than a month to reach 5 million downloads. We're clearly reaching a new world of users and we're doing it at a faster pace than any time in Mozilla's history."
Earlier this month Adam Dawson, of SecurityLearning, the internet security company, told Times Online: "Alternative web browsers like Opera, Firefox and, in the UK, Deepnet, are exploiting perceived weak spots in Internet Explorer to gain the hearts and minds of worldwide surfers.
"Users are tired of the security threats and frustrated by the patch-up tactics that have kept Explorer on the superhighway for more than two years without a major service."
OneStat's research was based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day.
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