Windows, Internet Explorer web shares still falling

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 02 December 2009 06:00

Your IT - Home IT

Given the relatively small month-to-month changes usually seen, it would normally take quite a while to make up a percentage point. But Windows 7's share is growing rapidly - the October figures were 2.21% (StatCounter) or 1.09% (StatCounter) - so you'd need to be fairly brave to bet against its web share surpassing Mac OS X's in December.

StatCounter does not break out the mobile OSes, but its "other" category rose from 1.24% to 1.58% for the month - though that is still well down on the 1.8% reported reported for the first two months of 2009.

The story is a little different when you look at browsers. Internet Explorer is losing share at a much faster rate than Windows.

How fast? Windows' web share slipped from 93.66% to 92.52% from January to November. IE went from 69.72% to 63.62% over the same period, including a full percentage point (more precisely, 1.02 points) from October to November.

Where's it going? Firefox is getting close to a quarter of the 'market' with 24.72% (up 0.65 percentage points for the month), while Chrome's continuing its steady rise (but only to 3.93%).

Safari slipped back slightly - presumably reflecting Mac OS X's drop in web share in November - but still took a larger share than it did in September.

Opera's share has improved from the middle of the year, possibly due to the latest release with built-in sharing features that appeared in November. But at just 2.31%, it's a distant fifth.

Opera Mini continues to improve its share, presumably reflecting the growth in web usage from mobile devices.

How does StatCounter see the state of browser usage? Find out on page 3.