Internet Explorer still losing ground

The beginning of a new month leads to new Net Applications statistics being made available. In the global Web browser market, Internet Explorer continues to lose market share despite IE9 on Windows 7 picking up.

Microsoft has decided to look at Net Applications figures with some optimism. We would have thought that they would be slightly disappointed that the release of Internet Explorer 9 hasn’t managed to stop the slow decline of their browser, but apparently not.

In April 2011, IE controlled 55.11% of the market. The release of IE9 through Windows Update hasn’t yet fully taken off, with IE9 displaying 2.41% market share, placing it slightly ahead of Opera (2.14%).

Unlike IE9, Mozilla decided not to exclude Windows XP from the release of Firefox version 4. Released after IE9, the browser is also Mac OS and Linux compatible and has obtained 5.43% market share. Nevertheless, this hasn’t been enough to slow down Firefox’s loss of users (21.63%).

While Chrome’s market share is a long way behind Internet Explorer, the world’s number three browser also has some way to go to catch up to Firefox, despite soon controlling 12% of the market. Mozilla has decided to speed up the release of Firefox versions, with this being to keep up the pace being set by Chrome.

Safari (7.15%) doesn’t really benefit from a quick development cycle, but nevertheless manages to hold their own thanks to the popularity of iOS devices which are increasingly providing web access.

But as previously said, Microsoft is continually optimistic, with the software giant preferring to hold market share while IE9 approaches 10% share on Windows 7.