Internet Explorer usage share slips despite gains with IE9 on Windows 7

By Tom Warren, on 1st Jul 11 11:45 am with 22 Comments

Microsoft’s overall Internet Explorer usage-share dipped again in June 2011 following a small increase in February and decrease in from March onwards.

Worldwide usage-share trackers Net Applications issued their monthly browser share report on Friday which indicates that Internet Explorer usage-share has taken another slight hit in June 2011. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer now controls 53.86% of the market compared to 63.20% a year ago and 67% in January 2009. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer market share has bled for months continuously as the company struggles to convince users to pick Internet Explorer for their browsing needs.

  • August 2010 – 60.48%
  • September 2010 – 59.62%
  • October 2010 – 59.18%
  • November 2010 – 58.44%
  • December 2010 – 57.08%
  • January 2011 – 56.00%
  • February 2011 – 56.77%
  • March 2011 – 55.92%
  • April 2011 – 55.11%
  • May 2011 – 54.27%
  • June 2011 – 53.86%

Microsoft chose to highlight the positives from Net Applications report on Friday. “June was another good month for Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7,” said Microsoft’s Roger Capriotti in a blog post on Friday. “IE9 has now become the most popular modern browser on Windows 7 in the US.” Net Applications highlighted Microsoft’s recent narrow focus on Internet Explorer 9 with Windows 7. “We have been tracking this strategy since it was implemented,” said a Net Applications spokesperson. “Browsers on Windows 7+ is a more accurate predictor of the future of browser share,” they added.

Internet Explorer 9 usage share is now at 15.61% worldwide on Windows 7 and 19.56% in the United States during the month of June.  Microsoft recently made Internet Explorer 9 available in 93 languages, more than any other rival browser.

  • http://www.hcltouch.com Hcltouch

    The main reason for the decrease in use of internet explorer is the bad user experience, when ie9 was released in the first 24 hour about 2.3 million people downloaded ie9 and within a day most of the moved back to ie 8 and Mozilla and Chrome….To regain its presence Internet Explorer should come with fast speed and more user friendly framework…Obviously looks matter a lot.. 

    • http://www.facebook.com/dominic.blakey Dominic Blakey

      It has all that! It’s user interface is actually a lot easier than other browsers on the market, and in terms of a minimalistic browser, IE is the smallest by far.
      It’s also very fast. Yeah Chrome for example me be 0.10 seconds faster than IE but who on earth knows or cares enough about that.

    • Guest

      What it doesn’t have is excitement. IE is a broken brand now, like Zune. MS would have been better off to release the IE9 bits as “XYZ” new and improved browser. The computer industry is turning into the fashion industry, where consumers want the “latest cool thing”. Chrome is seen as that, even though in my use it’s a mixed bag. IE isn’t.

      That aside, IE9 is a very good browser.

    • Guest

      Yeah, people seem to hate IE (perhaps because of past experience?). The browser you get by default on Windows 7 is IE8, and that isn’t exactly … a great experience either.

      IMO, so long as the IE team keeps improving their browser and making it better… I think marketshare will fix itself.

    • Joe05

      Within a day most had moved back to IE8 and Mozilla and Chrome? Where’s the data to prove this? I heard no such thing.

    • Joe05

      Within a day most had moved back to IE8 and Mozilla and Chrome? Where’s the data to prove this? I heard no such thing.

  • GP007

    I think the looks are fine, all the other browsers now look the same.  Look at chrome, ff5, opera, they’re all 99% the same UI, it’s silly.

    I think IE’s steady dip is still in part to older XP users still lagging around who dump IE6 but can’t go to IE9.

  • Anonymous

    I think not porting IE9 to XP is a mistake. Once an XP user switches to Chrome or Firefox, that’s a user MS may never get back. Even if that XP user upgrades to Windows 7, they will stick with other browser.

    • http://twitter.com/s_a_r_k_i_s sarkis chamelian

      They need IE9 on XP….. I’m an XP user for work (win7 for home) and I use chrome, reason is that IE8 is stupid slow, slows the machine down, takes FOREVER to open.  Chrome Just works and its HTML5 ?? 

    • Anonymous

      IE8 launches almost as fast as Chrome here. Problem with your system friend?

    • Test1ngi23

      Yeah. He’s got Windows on it. ;) I kid! i kid!

    • Mark

      You’re starting to embarass yourself now. How long before you swap aliases again?

    • Test1ngi23

      Again? What was my previous one? As far as I know, this is the only one I’ve ever used.

    • Guest

      I’m an IE user, and I don’t beleive IE8 opens as fast as chrome, unless you did something evil to chrome (or somehow sped up IE).

      XP is old and people need to move to newer platforms (Windows 7). It’s well worth the upgrade and is significantly more secure.

    • Grannyville7989

      I guess Microsoft are trying to encourage people to get off Windows  XP and upgrade to Windows 7. Perhaps doing it through the browser is not exactly the best way, but it’s pretty much their way of telling the world is that they’re done with support Windows XP.

    • Grannyville7989

      I guess Microsoft are trying to encourage people to get off Windows  XP and upgrade to Windows 7. Perhaps doing it through the browser is not exactly the best way, but it’s pretty much their way of telling the world is that they’re done with support Windows XP.

  • http://twitter.com/ArturoRyes Arturo Ryes

    Of all of MS strategies, IE has been one of the worst. So I am not surprised to see these numbers.

    • GP007

      What’s wrong with it now?  Sure the IE6 bit was a mess for years but that’s changed,  Since the start of IE8 actually (and fully supporting CSS2.1) right into IE9 and now as we see with IE10, they’ve been doing a great job without falling into the lame “lets update the version number even when we make small changes” games that chrome and now FF are playing.

      One thing MS could do is be more agressive with advertising IE9 I guess, but in the end the loss is, imo, limited to old XP users who can’t upgrade to IE9 anyways.   To that extent MS doesn’t mind and is only looking at users running Vista and Win7.

  • Anonymous

    Rate of decrease for IE actually slowed. Will probably slow even more as more people upgrade their XP machines.  And I know personally many FF/Chrome users who have actually moved back to IE after the IE9 launch because they prefer IE9′s UI given similar performance between the two. I don’t think MS is worried about the browser battle.

  • Anonymous

    Rate of decrease for IE actually slowed. Will probably slow even more as more people upgrade their XP machines.  And I know personally many FF/Chrome users who have actually moved back to IE after the IE9 launch because they prefer IE9′s UI given similar performance between the two. I don’t think MS is worried about the browser battle.

  • http://www.facebook.com/luis3007 Luis E. Padilla

    Right now we have 2 different worlds in browser use: consumer and enterprise: before Windows7, IE 6 was the default browser for the later despite IE7 or IE8, while the consumer market went to FF and Chrome, though some went to IE8/9.

    But the browser market will change again in the next 5 years as the entreprise massively moves to W7 computers instead of XP, and the browser standard will most likely be IE9 for them since IE10 will be tied with Windows 8. And with the recent slap by FF to bussiness, IE will remain the king in this sector.

  • JL

    I am one who actually came back from chrome to IE9, since it has so many little nice detais I care about. Couldnt be more saatisfied with it. Suprised to see only 20% of win7 folks are using it.