Internet Explorer Market Share Drops To Almost 15% 423
glitch0 writes "Internet Explorer used to be the most prevalent browser with a market share that peaked at 88% in March of 2003. Now they're down to almost 15% due to stiff competition from Google, Mozilla, and even Apple. What implications does this have for the future of Microsoft?"
Really one a sample size of 1 website? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, IE is losing marketshare but w3 schools statistics says nothing about the general population. Of course people who are studying web technologies are going to use other browsers. I would have more confidence if a site like Google or Yahoo published statistics.
Oh wow, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is statistics FROM THEIR WEBSITE.
Worse, it is statistics from a website that technically literate people visit!
Why this managed to reach the frontpage is beyond me.
This isn't indicative of browser usage in any realistic manner.
Hell, they even said so on the page. It is their own user logs.
One site means the whole internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
Submitter fail, again (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFA itself:
W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to the browser that comes preinstalled with their computer, and do not seek out other browser alternatives.
These facts indicate that the browser figures above are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is a more popular browser.
Glitch0, please submit your résumé to CNN. They greatly value your kind of selective reading skills.
Article Should Be Modded down As Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really one a sample size of 1 website? (Score:3, Insightful)
People running IE are far less likely to have blocked statcounter.com than those running other browsers.
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 8 will be a trainwreck. Too many changes for most users. The issue is windows 9 (whatever that will look like).
Re:Microsoft...a blast from the past... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's what people actually want what's wrong with that?
All the backend stuff in windows, the x86/ARM stuff, processes, multiprocessor features etc. are mostly irrelevant to the day to day user experience of 'how do I start the program I want to run?'. If customers, because of 20 years of practice want a start menu... why not just give it to them.
No one is obliged to buy windows 8, if it's not what you want, don't buy it, and wait till they have a version that is what you want. (Or change OS's, which of course the big risk, as people don't have any desire to tolerate this sort of success-failure-success cycle MS has had going for a while).
Re:none (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is obliged to buy windows 8
There are "strict" obligations and then there are practical obligations.
MSFT's Windows lock-in with the manufacturers means that you'll buy Windows if you buy a pre-built computer from anyone except tiny Linux shops. Or Apple.
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
How well did that work out for vista?
I suspect that there will be a rush to get computers *without* windows 8 and then a lull until we see windows 9.
Fast but its Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped using windows years ago because everything was office office office. Most people type, spellcheck, then print/email. Or they make ugly powerpoints and the most advanced feature used is to import a graph from excel. This is not what MS should have based their entire company on; and if it truly was the core of the company they would have put office on Linux long ago.
I don't think MS knows what it is and while that is going on the Office section has mostly dominated.
To contrast it with Apple's success; They know they are iTunes. Google mostly knows it is searching mass amounts of data and ads. And facebook knows it is monkeys standing under the tree looking at the shiny thing.
So I suspect that the new Windows is a good idea at its core but it will end up soaking in a caustic bath of Office until it is brittle and smells funny.
Windows 9 will be an attempt to compensate for the Office induced stink by wrapping it in steel bands to reenforce the structure. I am willing to bet that if the OS programmers at MS were able to tell the Office people to bugger off and even go so far as to sandbox their whole suite that Windows might regain the crown. I was so happy when Firefox walled out crap from MS putting itself into FF. It is this sort of thinking that has dogged MS for over a decade.
I remember when NT was really popular with programmers and I think one of the main reasons was that it wasn't tripping over itself to push other MS products. They had designed it to be a server OS with a thin GUI and the office people left it largely alone.
Re:Really one a sample size of 1 website? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:none (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously I don't have a study to point to, we'll see when it arrives, I'm guessing just as is anyone else here.
Microsoft could pull something truly awesome out of its hat and make windows 8 a must have for a lot of people, rough edges and all.
The thing with tablets, is that microsoft lost that battle already. If you want a consumer tablet you buy an ipad. The great selling point of android was not a walled garden, and runs flash, but now flash is dying. Windows tablets seem more like business devices, but who knows, there's not really anything compelling about them as content consumption devices that you can't do on android or ipad already.
Now again, i admit, I could be completely misreading the market here, but I would expect microsoft to really struggle on tablet traction.
Which takes us back to the desktop, and in that case I don't really see windows 8 taking off. In some ways it's the same problem as vista, but worse. What does windows 8 do for me? I'm not seeing a whole lot I get out of it (and it takes away my ability to watch TV on my PC), it's going to be confusing to use and add very little. So there's no real compelling reason to upgrade unless they pull some new features that are really worth having.
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is obliged to buy windows 8
There are "strict" obligations and then there are practical obligations.
MSFT's Windows lock-in with the manufacturers means that you'll buy Windows if you buy a pre-built computer from anyone except tiny Linux shops. Or Apple.
Windows is next. These things take time. What do I mean? I'll answer the summary's question.
What implications does this have for the future of Microsoft?
That karma is very, very real and eventually even fat stupid Americans catch on and figure out that you're abusing them. It just takes them a long time. Anyone with a fully developed conscience stopped giving Microsoft money 15 years ago when they realized what they would have been funding. The rest care about only their own convenience and jump ship when an alternative is obviously superior. One way or another the result is inevitable.
So what will these "fat stupid Americans" switch to? Linux? Or will Apple start selling machines at a reasonable price and achieve larger market share? Something else I am not aware of? Curious to know.
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
"If customers, because of 20 years of practice want a start menu... why not just give it to them."
20 Years? 26 for me. I began with Windows 1.03 and I really don't like new crap.
First thing I always do with a new version is to disable all the visual gimmicks, like aero, menu shadings etc and install the classic scheme. Lately I also had to install utilities to get a decent menu.
Went to LibreOffice because of that damn Ribbon as well.
It's a fucking tool that I used for over a quarter century, I don't have the patience to get slowed down every couple of years because some young moron thinks some new gimmick is 'cool'.
Re:none (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What implications? (Score:3, Insightful)
IE is Windows-only. Users that want IE, must use Windows. Users that prefer Firefox or Chrome can switch OS without switching browsers.
This is just part of the Windows lock-in. Office is another major one. As long as people stick to MS Office, they must stick to Windows. If they start using OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice, they can switch OS without switching word processor.
The list goes on. For now the lock-in to Windows, partly thanks to the large number of software titles that are Windows-only, is strong. But every application they lose, and IE is a high-profile one, lessens the lock-in.
And then there's this trend towards more and more in-browser applications, like Google Docs and the like. IE not being the one dominant browser (like it was in the IE6 era) means these apps are going to be written to standards, and run in all browsers. As soon as all software runs in-browser, not only the browser becomes irrelevant (any will do), the OS becomes irrelevant (any that can run a standards-compliant browser will do - or just stick to the basic Mozilla OS or however they call it now), even the underlying hardware becomes irrelevant.
For the world, that's a good thing. For MS, it's not.
Re:none (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
I am still waiting for all the games I like to run on Apple or Linux. I think I still have to wait a very long time for that.
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is obliged to buy windows 8, if it's not what you want, don't buy it
Huh? Where have you been for the last 20 years?
Try going into a computer shop this time next year. See if you can buy a new PC/Laptop without Windows 8*. Let us know how you get on.
(*) Unless it's a Mac, obviously...
Re:none (Score:3, Insightful)
XP will receive security updates until April 8, 2014.
Windows 7 until January 14, 2020.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/lifecycle [microsoft.com]
Why use XP? Think about the Enterprise, with hundreds or thousands of machines in different departments. Applications that have not been updated to work with later tech, such as JInitiator (requires Jedi hacking to work on x64), websites that may only work with IE 6 or 7, in-house batch files / scripts, compatibility with older servers, and so on.
Training isn't much where I'm at - people can barely report what OS they work on ("Do you see the word 'Start' at the lower-left, or a circle?") and most just clickity-click on whatever app they need to run. Outlook, Office, and IE are more like an OS to them.
Sometimes it is just as simple as plopping the new OS on, USMT, map the drives, and done. But in a varied environment it gets somewhat hairier, with infinite support calls. Better to wait either until the 3rd parties catch up or until you can implement workarounds and research fixes and alternatives.
One size does not fit all (Score:5, Insightful)
> Because they need to demote Windows 7 / .NET & COM to essentially a hosted
> operating system to force change. They reason they need to force change is because
> they want to support much more diverse hardware like phones and tablets. And that
> means in particular moving to vector not bitmapped based interface standards
> which effects all windows applications.
WTF??? Look, I agree that the desktop UI paradigm might suck on tablets+smartphones. That does *NOT* justify putting a tablet+smarthphone UI on desktop PCs, where it'll suck just as badly. Different horse for different courses, etc.
Re:none (Score:5, Insightful)
> Win8 will do well, IMO. It will come out coupled with touchscreens,
> on which it really does work well - certainly far better than 7.
Oh boy, just what I need. Throw away the mouse. and stretch my arm out 2 feet to drag+drop stuff all the way across my 24 inch LCD screen. No thanks. You think people had carpal tunnel syndrome in the past, wait till this monstrosity takes over.
Re:none (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, and it was so bad that I've got a bunch of "old" Vista laptops that were discarded by their owners in favor of them buying a new machine with Windows 7. There was nothing wrong with the hardware. Just the OS. In some cases I downgraded people's machines to XP. In other cases they just gave me the hardware because they didn't want it. Vista was so bad, and the market position so dominant, that Microsoft drove sales with it. People refreshed their machines much sooner than they probably would have if Vista wasn't a piece of crap. It's like selling to drug addicts or something.
I wonder what's going to happen if Windows 8 turns out to be another disaster?