Microsoft IE6 proves the power of the brand

Stan Beer
Friday, 13 October 2006 14:22

Opinion and Analysis

The latest figures from browser stats watcher Net Applications show that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 has lost a couple of percent of market share to Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari. However, what surprises the most is not the IE6 losses but how small they are.

Without a doubt, Internet Explorer 6 is a clearly inferior browser to all the other serious offerings - Firefox, Safari and Opera.

IE6 has been proven to be insecure, requiring patches nearly every monthly patch cycle. It is slow compared to Firefox and Opera and it lacks functionality, such as tabbed pages, and it doesn't even have an integrated search box on its tool bar.

Despite all this, Microsoft has managed to maintain a greater than 80% marketshare, against opposition that has been light years ahead, such as Firefox, which has struggled to achieve just over 12% - which in fact is a remarkable achievement, given what it has been up against.

In less sophisticated markets, some users have never heard of Firefox, while in more sophisticated markets, many users sinmply couldn't be bothered making the switch from the browser that came bundled with their desktop operating system. The same holds true for Apple and Safari, whose growth almost certainly tacks growing sales of the Macintosh range.

Microsoft is getting ready to switch its users over to IE7, which in terms of functionlity at least matches the current version of Firefox. This will make it doubly hard for Firefox to grow its share among Windows desktop users, especially when Vista hits the market.

All that said, Linux, where Firefox reigns supreme, continues to nibble away microscopic bites of the Windows user base wherever it can and Firefox has still managed to defy the odds and inch its way forward among Windows users. Whether Firefox can continue to make gains in the face of the Vista and IE7 double team is another question.