Internet Explorer claws back
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has been in steady decline for the past couple of years as Firefox stamped its mark on the browser market and Apple’s Safari claimed its share of IE’s lost market share.
That was until three months ago when at an all-time low of just over 59% of the market, IE started to trend upwards. The increases are minute but now, after three months of improvement it looks as if IE’s decline is has been arrested, for now.
According to analytics firm NetApplications, Internet Explorer’s market share for July was 60.74%, 0.42% higher than last month and a full percentage point higher than its low in May this year.
Firefox, in comparison, had lost 1.4% market share since May and 1.68% since its previous high of 24.59% in April. The open source browser, which has been hovering just below the 25% market share mark for the past year, now sits at 22.91%.
Over the past year Google’s Chrome browser has made significant gains in the market (up from 3% in September 2009 to 7% now) but even it lost some ground in July. Chrome dropped from 7.24% to 7.16% over the course of July.
Which leaves IE and Apple’s Safari with a healthy increase. Safari continued its upward trend, climbing 0.24 percentage points to 5.09%. Internet Explorer jumped 0.42 points higher to 60.74%.
With the exception of Google’s Chrome, however, none of the major browsers (including Opera) have made huge inroads into each other’s market share over the past year.
The three-month boost for IE is important because it reverses a trend, but with both Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 set for release shortly, a new shakeup in the market could be due.
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