IE6 Still Going Strong In China

RackNine writes "Net Applications estimates that IE6 has a share of 33.8% in China, StatCounter estimates about 40.2%. Consider the fact that there are currently about 477 million Internet users in China and you get 160 to 192 million IE6 users. That is potentially more than all Internet users in Africa and the Middle East combined (187 million)."

Botnets

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Is it any wonder why so many botnets command zombie legions in China?

Is it also any wonder why so much high-profile hacking originates from inside China? (undoubtedly a lot of it does come from Chinese efforts, but anybody that's interested in hacking high-profile targets can just route themselves through China, too)

China uses the Maxthon browser

[Hermanas]

Just a thought, but isn't this because China mainly uses the Maxthon browser, which uses IE6 as its engine (or at least used to, for a looong time)? They built a browser on top of IE6 that has tabs and other modern things, so the user experience isn't as completely shit as plain old IE6.

Re:IE6 has 30%-40% in China?

[AmiMoJo]

The key difference is that most computers in the west have a valid Windows license, but most computers in China have a pirate one. Pirate copies can't install later versions of IE.

Back when I used to fix PCs I noticed that a lot of Chinese students used pre-cracked install CDs which disabled automatic updates. If you keep installing new hacks you can get the updates, but for non-technical people that isn't really an option.