IE Market Share Drops Below 70%

Mike writes "Microsoft's market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. It's too early to tell for sure, but if Net Applications' numbers are correct, then Microsoft's Internet Explorer will end 2008 with a historic market share loss in a software segment Microsoft believes is key to its business."

Layoffs

So....heard that Microsoft might be laying off 15% of its workforce?

Well.....this might compound that.

Re:Layoffs

and if you listen slightly to the West, you just might hear some of them land...

And if you listen slightly to the East, you just might hear some stock brokers land... *splat*

Re:Layoffs

Well we could economize the situation by placing the stockbrokers in the chairs before handing them to Ballmer.

Re:Layoffs

Or buy IKEA shares

Re:Layoffs

Disappearance of microsoft will not be a happy event for nerds

Microsoft isn't going anywhere. Let's review which market segments they are involved in:
* Productivity Software (Office) that is (for better or worse) almost universally used.
* Workstating Operating System Software that is (for better or worse) almost universally used.
* Video game consoles.
* Server operating systems
* Database software
* Exchange (e-mail software? Whatever the hell you wanna call it)
* MSNBC

Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure others can add those that I've missed. Microsoft isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future. They've diversified quite well and have a foothold in so many different markets it's not funny. Wait long enough and you'll see them borrow a page from GE's play book and start their own financing division.

Re:Layoffs

The number of programmers employed to write shrink-wrap software aimed at consumers is a tiny fraction of the number of programmers writing software for use inside their own company.

Re:Layoffs

Disappearance of microsoft will not be a happy event for nerds : it will be a disaster.

...Because people will now use decent operating systems that don't go into kernel panic half the time? Because viruses sharply decrease? Because there is no monopoly? Because of the growth of OSS?

Hopefully consumers remain accustomed to paying for software even when microsoft dies, or the market that pays our salaries shrinks by 90% or so. Even if companies continue to pay it will still be a large portion that dies.

Look at Red Hat and look at the future when MS dies. Red Hat isn't exactly struggling and yet all their software is pure OSS not even "freeware".

The demise of MS will only lead to better software, more competition, lower prices, and no more annoying unpaid tech support calls from your parents/grandparents/brother/etc.

Yay!

Let me be the first (?) to say "Yay"!!

IE has been dominating and destroying the Web for far too long. The lower market share will indicate increased platform diversity and consumer choice.

Re:Yay!

Well, I'm not entirely optimistic yet. Sure, Microsoft is losing on features, quality and security... no duh. They are beyond the point where they can actually put out a decent product that doesn't all but collapse under its own corpulence. On the other hand, Microsoft didn't become the biggest and most powerful software company based on features, quality and security.

Sooner or later they are going to start fighting back (and I don't mean that feeble, half-hearted IE8), and they never fight clean.

Re:Yay!

Total moronic nonsense.

That's shameless historical revisionism.

It was browsers like Netscape that were enabling what you
describe. They were doing this before it occured to Microsoft
to bundle a web browser with their OS. Infact the browser they
decided to bundle (spyglass) was just one of these browsers
that GOT THERE FIRST.

This is supposed to be "Windows" where just putting in a CD
and installing some software shouldn't be rocket science.

Try this crap on people that didn't live through it all.

Old news

This data is a month old. It was discussed on slashdot before (but I don't remember if it got its own article). Why not wait a day or so and post year-end statistics?

Re:Old news

God, this article must be one of the crappiest in a long, long time. The december figures are already up!

Browser trends [hitslink.com]
MSIE 68.15%
Firefox 21.34%
Safari 7.93%
Chrome 1.04%
Opera 0.71%

Operating system trends [hitslink.com]
Windows 88.68%
Macs 9.63%
Linux 0.85%
iPhone 0.44%

The two line summary:
Firefox and Safari both take lots of market share from MSIE which is now way below 70%.
Macs have a huge one-month (0.8%) and two-month (1.4%) rise while Linux is flatline.

Who's history?

Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history

It's been renamed several times, somewhat refactored, had a few parts replaced and a lot more added, but that code base was once the most popular browser on the planet.

--Markus

3 options

Looks like MS has 3 options:

1. Accept their falling marketshare (good for everyone)
2. Provide substantial IE improvements to regain marketshare (good for everyone)
3. release a "bug fix" that just happens to fuck up firefox

Bundling and Bungling

This is really not a surprise. IE is an inferior product. It always has been. The market share it has received is solely attributable to the bundling with the Microsoft operating systems.

When people become savvy enough to realize there is a choice and be able to find and implement that choice.... they do. I have been trying to get all the offices, clients, etc. that I have worked with to switch to Firefox since.. well forever. It's more secure.

Now, I realize that there might be some MS fanboys out there to argue that point, but you have a lot of work to do. IE is horrible at security. It is almost as if they just don't care. I am willing to admit that IE is a bigger target, but that does not excuse Microsoft's behavior with it.

The greatest setback that Firefox, and others have is that Microsoft does not play nice with the world community. Until recently there have been a huge number of websites that will only work with IE. That is slowly changing now too. No longer are consumers and business customers chained to IE because Firefox cannot work with their website that they need.

The only direction IE ever could go was down. If Microsoft wants to change that then they need to do some serious work and start cooperating with the rest of world. Build a better product is the simplest way to put it.

In the end it will Microsoft's hubris that pushes IE into the minority.

Re:Bundling and Bungling

Well, IE is like US cell phone service. It's all about controlling the customer.

I recently bought a Windows smartphone (I have Windows CE apps I need to run). It's a pretty good phone (which is most important), and it wouldn't be a bad platform except that what the product wants to be is grossly distorted by the priorities of the carrier. It's locked down so you have to buy apps through the carrier (although I fixed this with some registry edits). In many other subtle ways, a product that could have been pretty good is undermined by the desire to funnel the user into the carrier's other products.

Things would have been better for the consumer if we'd adopted GSM at the outset like Europe and you could buy any phone and pop your SIM into it. Then the features of phones would be driven by making the best possible phone, not driving additional revenue to the carrier.

It seems to me IE is much the same. It doesn't implement standards very well, because that's bad for Microsoft. MS offers developers a carrot and stick: a nicely interlocked set of development tools that drive products into an MS only stack, and then the stick of incompatibility when you use non-MS software. It's predicated on promoting a world in which MS controls the software ecosystem.

The reason IE has been bad at security is that once MS cut off Netscape's air supply, making the best browser has not been the focus of the development efforts. It's been keeping an MS only product stack the path of least resistance.

Re:Bundling and Bungling

I've got a coworker that is an IE fanatic. He keeps pointing out that IE uses less memory than FF, he's right. He also tallies up whenever I complain of a crash vs when he complains of one... and he's winning (as in fewer crashes).

I love being anti-m$, but you can't just dismiss their product as second-rate because you want it to be.

Poor execution, exclusive mentality

I think just about everyone in tech, outside of Microsoft, saw this coming. Instead of adopting inclusive standards, MS opted for exclusive, proprietary technology and then implemented it poorly. ActiveX, VBScript, .NET...all require Windows and IE to work right. They tried to tie their OS to the development environment, the server environment and did everything they could to try and force the client as well.

IE was a stagnant, monolithic bug farm that lacked imagination and, perhaps most desperately, innovation. How many Firefox add-ons would be hard to live without? NoScript, FlashBlock, FireFTP there are dozens of applets that let you customize your browsing experience to your preference.

IE Almost 70% -- Really?

Somehow I must question those surveys. While quite a number of people I know use Windows, almost no-one I know actually uses IE as their default browser. Unfortunately severely insecure features of IE, like ActiveX, are needed to upgrade Windows. I'm sure Mozilla is capable of making its own 'ActiveX', but I guess they'd be sued as we are talking essentially American businesses. As we all know, it is rather difficult to remove IE from Windows. Clearly, the best option is the trend: Abandon Windows!

Any hacker can make their Firefox (or Opera) look like IE or any other browser. For instance, I don't use "Flash", but while I use FreeBSD, the scripts say its "Flash-10" on "IE-7" on Windows. Perhaps I should have some pride and tell the truth? I'm using Firefox, but I'm not sure that Firefox is what I have set in my proxy. Let me explain. Ikea, in Holland, gives you a 5% discount if you order with IE. Of course I'm not going to fire up Windows to order from Ikea! So, I simply "lie" and take 5% off.

If IE has up to 70% market share, its simply because Windows doesn't allow you to choose your browser like any other system does. If they did, they could just as well throw in the towel on IE. The percentage that use Windows is suspect too. Maybe some have it on hand just for an application or two? I know for a fact that many Windows desktops are running in Linux. (Doesn't an Xterm look great on a Windows desktop? ;)

Finally: (Taco) How many more people say they use Firefox on Slashdot than your logs indicate? I think you see what I mean.

BillSF
           

Re:Opera's low percentage.

Yes, I am surprised that even Chrome has a higher usage share, considering Opera is actually a very good and useable browser and has been around for a long time. It would actually be a great all-in-one solution for many since it is a great browser, email client and torrent downloading in one application.

Re:Opera's low percentage.

Considering Opera's install base on mobile devices I would expect that number to be much higher. Considering its common configuration to mis-identify as IE to avoid website misbehavior, I predict that that number is seriously under-representative of the true marketshare. Also, never use statistics that are not explained. What does "70%" mean on this chart? 70% of visits (define visits?)? 70% of hits? 70% of unique IP addresses? 70% of traffic?

Re:For fucks sake people... please...

How about NOT pointing out that more than two thirds of users on this planet are still browsing the net with IE -

...And about 2/3 of computer users don't really know how to actually *use* a computer. How many people do you know that either A) are scared to death of their computer, B) Use their computers very, very, little or C) has someone else make all decisions on their computer (such as a work computer)

I imaging that just about 2/3rds of people fall into those categories. Those that are scared of their computer probably think that Firefox is a virus because it wasn't pre-installed at the factory, these people also are the type to still have the Dell wallpaper still as their desktop background because changing it might somehow break their computer. These are the older people or people who don't really understand that the worst they can do to their $1000 is delete all their data.

Those that use their computers very little usually think of their computers only as tools to write e-mails, check blogs, and get on iTunes. They don't care about their browsers, they don't care about most anything on their computer. They might know how to play FreeCell but thats about it. This is a lot of students and working people.

And it is self-explanatory about those who have other people manage their computers, they just lack the access to change the browser or are afraid of getting yelled at by their computer-illiterate CEO because they installed Firefox even though it would be better than the IE6 currently installed on the company's desktop.

So really, 1/3rd of computer users know how to actually *use* a computer and have root access on their boxes. Or they just use Mac/Linux and wouldn't use IE.

Re:For fucks sake people... please...

Get over yourself already.

Used to be web *was* IE and people were reduced to fool web pages with bogus client ID to get working IE web code instead of terrible buggy netscape 4.x code or just simple "get IE" -banner.

2/3rd is still a lot but it was 90% a little while ago and it could be perfectly justified to develop a new site IE only.

With these figures, in 2009 new sites designed have even stronger reason to cater for the "other" demographic.

Too bad there's no credible alternative to vista or vista 2nd release in sight for your average gaming-oriented PC. I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there. And the other notable requires joining a cult with the membership fee charged in overpriced hardware.

Re:I don't get it

It's control. If the majority use IE, then MS can push out their proprietary standards that will force everyone else to buy their development products, and maybe use their server platform.

Re:Finally

Safari on Windows just... fails compared to Firefox. No extensions, the strange Aqua GUI which no doubt increases the amount of memory and libraries to load that is un-themeable, and just about 0 customization makes Safari hard to recommend. Granted, its better than IE, but compared to Firefox just about everything minus the WebKit rendering engine (which, isn't much faster or slower then Gecko) can be done on Firefox and much, much, more.