June 1, 2009
one year of internet explorer usage share
The last year has been very exciting for browser vendors, Web developers, and users going online. With the release of Google Chrome, Firefox 3, and Internet Explorer 8, the Web is getting better for everyone.
The most dramatic movement in the browser market, however, has belonged to Internet Explorer.
Data from Market Share by Net Applications
Internet Explorer 6 continues its long downward trend, dropping about 10 points in the last year and IE 8 has been cannibalizing IE 7 users at a strong pace for the last 3 months.
I expect that the next month will see IE 6 finally fall under 15% (and hopefully trending to fall under 10% by the end of this year.) That's good news for everyone.
We should also see IE 8 meeting IE 7 and crossing at about 25% each in the next couple of months.
What does this mean for you as a Web developer? As a user? As a browser maker?
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
Posted by: Raymond | June 1, 2009 8:22 PM
To me, the IE6 curve looks like exponential drop-off from 10/1/08 onwards. Which means that its drop-off rate is slowing down. But the rate rose at that time compared to the past three months, so what happened at that time, three months before Christmas (which by the way only gave a temporary drop and if anything a drop in rate).
Just checked google trends, and it seems that, what happened was that chrome was introduced.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=internet+explorer&date=ytd
Posted by: AndersH | June 1, 2009 9:35 PM
The seasonal and holiday fluctuations are much more significant than the Chrome releases. You'd have to look at the longer-term trends to see them though.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | June 1, 2009 9:40 PM
I think the time axis would be much more readable for us europeans if you were to chose another date format (maybe with the month in letters or something).
Thanks!
Posted by: Benoit | June 1, 2009 10:24 PM
Benoit, you're a smart guy. You can figure it out. The title of the blog post is "one year of internet explorer usage share." You shouldn't even need to read the dates. Each column is two months. There are six of them. Counting backwards is easy :-)
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | June 1, 2009 11:13 PM
Some countries still having high percents for IE6. How do you suggest getting people to abandon that old browser, and get it replaced by IE8 or even better - Firefox 3.5?
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-IL-daily-20080701-20090602
Posted by: Tomer Cohen | June 2, 2009 12:37 AM
Tomer, the trends are all in the right direction, even in countries where IE 6 still has far too many users. We just need to keep pushing where and how we can and trust that over time that scourge will fade.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | June 2, 2009 1:19 AM
Cool data, Asa. Oh, BTW, Die IE6, die!
Posted by: Tristan | June 2, 2009 2:13 AM
Tomer, Statcounter doesn't seem too reliable to me. According to them, we have more than 60% marketshare in Germany. If only ;)
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-DE-daily-20080701-20090602
Posted by: Kadir | June 2, 2009 7:02 AM
People seem to switch to IE8 from IE7, but IE6 doesn't seem overly affected. Its share is not plummeting at all, it is declining slowly, as has been the case for months. This is very much business as usual in IE6-land. IE8 is available for Windows XP SP2, though. So, what gives?
Posted by: Adam | June 2, 2009 5:50 PM
My employer still has a large number of PCs running Windows 2000, which does not support IE7 or newer.
Most likely they, and other companies like them, are the largest reason for the staying power of IE6. Whenever these companies move to newer hardware and OS, we should see dramatic drop off in IE6 usage.
Posted by: Mark | June 3, 2009 11:10 AM
I Agree with you Mark: The reason for IE6 persistence is win2000 persistence.
Posted by: Marco | June 4, 2009 12:42 AM
Well I don't agree with you Mark, there are alternatives for IE6 on a Windows 2000 machine. Where is Mozilla Firefox? (and I've also seen people running Google Chrome on Windows 2000).
I wrote a blog post http://blog.dreamlabsolutions.com/post/2009/05/14/Why-do-you-still-use-IE6.aspx the other day when I observed that 15% of my audience is still using IE6. Because this is a technical/programming blog I expected this to be 0.0001%.
It's weird sometimes how people are interested in moving on with the trends of computer science: new version, new updates, new architecture, blah ... and they don't care about a browser that came out in 2001 with "only partial" support for CSS1 (which is a standard since 1995)!?!?
I'm sorry but I can only compare this to: have an antivirus from 2001 and don't update its database: IT WILL DEFINITELY PROTECT YOU :).
Posted by: Arnold Matusz | June 4, 2009 10:37 PM
This is great news! We can finally eliminate some of the extra codes that we have used to get things working in IE6 and IE7.