IE Drops To Single-Digit Market Share 390
New submitter fplatten writes "I think this is all you need to see to know what legacy Steve Ballmer has left at Microsoft, where its IE browser market share has collapsed from a high of 86% in 2002 to just 9% now. I guess this is just another in a long list of tech companies that failed to maintain its dominant market share. Also, IE may be the one product that never really deserved it, but just piggybacked on Windows, and users left in droves once decent (more secure) alternatives and standards became popular." Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though -- browser choice is a pretty small arm of the octopus.
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:1, Interesting)
I really like IE10 on my Win 7 and use it as my default browser. The layout is more streamlined that firefox, which seems to take over half your screen with menus. speed is fast. have you tried this version? I don't use chrome because it gives google a direct view into everything I do, and no thank you. at home
I use safari as my default on mac, but I don't use the windows version of safari because for whatever reason they decided to make the win version resemble the mac version as closely as possible and it looks weird.
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:5, Interesting)
keep in mind windows 8 live tiles are all front ended with internet explorer. so they are anticipating higher ie traffic to sites that windows preloads so they can sound like they are doing something to compete with open source browsers...
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know that an insurance co.'s site would be a good example here.
I have several sites I have to access that I cannot use anything but IE to visit them and do my business.
I think it would depend on the ins. co. correctly implementing standards to be a valid source of data for this discussion.
IMHO, all of the browser stats are biased in some way.
Too many of the stats come from niche or specialized websites.
I would think somewhere like google search to be a better place to gather stats for this.
But, I'm not a web developer, so what do I know?
Re:15% of my customers are IE7 or below (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, this plan backfired on Microsoft. What other browser vendor supports 6 major versions of their browser? Oh, and if you thought that IE6 would fall off with the demise of WinXP, think again--it came with Windows Server 2003, so IE6 is already supported until 7/2015, just shy of 14 years after it was introduced!!! (And that's not assuming that XP doesn't continue to get support fixes beyond 4/2014 or even 7/2015...)
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet apple.com is even lower ;)
You might be surprised. I seem to recall that they revealed the breakdown a few years back, and the IE traffic was much higher than you'd expect, simply because of interest from the typical, rank-and-file Windows variety of users who were looking for a change. I'll admit that I could be misremembering, however.
Re:No doubt IE is losing share but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:5, Interesting)
I would think somewhere like google search to be a better place to gather stats for this.
You would think, but then again most people probably don't change the default search provider in their browser. And I don't believe that IE's default search provider is Google.
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:2, Interesting)
The Web Devs you know still pronounce it like a scream because they are probably still required to support IE 7 and 8. IE 9 is much better and IE 10/11 I prefer over Firefox.
The thing about Chrome not following standards is also true. Chrome is fast, but does too many bad non-standard things and is attempting to become the next IE 6 as far as breaking the web in non-standard ways. For philosophical reasons such as this I refuse to use Chrome except when testing. This means that IE is in fact my primary, preferred browser on Windows machines that have IE 10 or 11.
We'll be dropping support for IE 8 later this year which will open up all sorts of new possibilities to use things supported by IE 9 and Safari 6, but not in IE 8/Safari 5.1
Sincerely,
A full time web dev
"Idiots" (Score:3, Interesting)
As much as I loathe Internet Explorer, this sort of response is unproductive. A lot of people are forced to use Internet Explorer who are neither idiots nor prey on them. Public access computers in libraries, computers in businesses and non-profits that have limited IT resources, and schools in lower income areas are also large users of Internet Explorer.
Such blind, fanboyish hatred doesn't serve those users at all.
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:4, Interesting)
Visitor attraction + scientific research institution, 50% hits from UK, rest pretty much even across the rest of the world:
Main domain: 650k "visits" (Google Analytics definition) this month. 31% Chrome, 26% IE, 18% Safari, 17% Firefox, 3% Android.
60% Windows, 19% iOS, 13% Mac, 6% Android, 1% Linux.
Another domain of no interest to visitors, only scientists (and hobbyists, probably): 52k visits, 33% Chrome, 33% Firefox, 24% IE, 7% Safari, 2% Opera(!), 1% Android
85% Windows, 10% Mac, 2% iOS, 1% Linux (the site isn't very nice on a mobile, we don't think many people want to look at tables of data on a tiny screen).
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:3, Interesting)
As a government body, of course, they'll also be skewed. There's probably, for example, loads of poor bastards forced to use IE6 or whatever and who are not allowed to installer their own choice of browser for security reasons (don't laugh!).
Re:More reprsentative stats please (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing is, or rather, something wrong, is that Android's marketshare is around 80% of smart devices, iOS around 20%. And yet in all your stats, iOS still comes out ahead of Android.
Even Ars Technica [arstechnica.com], a site for technical enthusiasts still records just over 50% IE usage. And on mobile, iOS takes 50% of the traffic, while Android is around 35% (Android+Chrome).
So the question is - why is iOS so over-represented? We know there are at least 4 times as many Android devices out there.
Re: More reprsentative stats please (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider leaving a decent savings account along with the kids... if something happens to you, you have left a rainy day account to take care of your obligations.
I am hard pressed to trust anyone to pay my bills after my interment. I learned my lesson after years of dutifully paying for dental "insurance", month after month dutifully enclosing my check for "coverage", only to have it explained to me in the dentist's office when an expensive procedure was recommended, that I would not be "covered" because it was "abrasion" and not normal wear and tear. There went several thousand dollars worth of premiums down the drain. No wonder insurance companies can pay agents, build big buildings, and advertise like all getout. They get to keep the premium money, cause sick people don't put up much of a fight. The insurance industry has also found out that if people wise up to their business model, they can go lobby Congress to make their product mandatory. Many Congressmen are quite reticent to "just say NO" to a Lobbyist.