Windows, Internet Explorer web shares still falling

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 02 December 2009 06:00

Your IT - Home IT

The latest statistics show little change in the web shares of various browsers and operating systems. Even the rapid rise in Windows 7 wasn't enough to return growth to Windows, and Internet Explorer's share continues to decline.

Looking at the figures released by web analytics firms isn't quite as bad as mulling over chicken entrails, but the trends are more meaningful than the absolute numbers.

As far as operating system web shares are concerned, there's not much to see in Net Applications' figures.

Windows was flat at 92.52%, Mac was down a mere 0.15 of a percentage point to 5.12% (where it was in September), and Linux crept back up by 0.04 of a point to 1% (almost recovering to the levels seen during the second quarter).

The proportionally largest rise was seen for Java ME: from 0.35% to 0.46%. Symbian was also up fractionally, from 0.17% to 0.19%.

As for the iPhone, it was down 0.01 of a point to 0.36%, but that's still higher than it was in September.

So the underlying trends still seem to be a slow but fairly steady loss of share for Windows that's being fairly evenly split between mobile devices on one hand, and Mac and Linux on the other.

Rival web analytics company StatCounter paints a different picture, with Windows losing 0.38 of a point to 92.74%, Linux recovering to 0.72% (back to where it was midyear), and Mac OS putting on another 0.35 points to 4.96%.
The only month this year where StatCounter saw Mac OS X slipping back was in May, but in June it more than recouped the lost ground.

Both companies agree that Windows 7 alone is approaching Mac OS X's web share: 4.00% vs 4.96% according to Net Applications, and 4.05% vs 4.96% on StatCounter's numbers.

And Windows 7 use is growing rapidly - see page 2.