Browser MarketShare Still a Tight Race

The browser wars are as tight as always with the major players swapping positions constantly by the thinnest of margins. As usual Internet Explorer takes the main market share of users, with Chrome making modest gains with Firefox losing a bit of ground..

After phenomenal growth in December, IE11 grabbed an additional 1.09 percentage points (moving 10.42 percent to 11.51 percent), finally passing IE10

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Funny that IE6 & 7 have more users than all Safari users. IE8 (XP users most likely) still makes up a larger share than either Firefox or Chrome.

I'm not sure what's more disturbing, the number of users still on IE6 (5% is a lot for a 13 year old browser), or the overall degree of fragmentation among Internet Explorer users in general. The IE userbase is split among 6 versions, with the most popular version being 3 versions old, and itself only comprising about a third of the overall number of IE users. Though I feel that Microsoft brought this on themselves using OS launches to release new versions of IE and not making those new versions available to users of older versions of windows until months later, if at all. I'd be curious to know how many people are using an old version of IE because they are too lazy/ignorant to upgrade vs the number of people who would upgrade, if they could (XP users stuck on IE8, etc).

A lot of corporate users in big institutions don't have the freedom of changing their browser and are stuck with older versions due to compatibility with internal web apps.

mi7chy said:

A lot of corporate users in big institutions don't have the freedom of changing their browser and are stuck with older versions due to compatibility with internal web apps.

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We fight this from time to time at work (medical imaging research). We have to access hospital web sites that require ancient versions of java and/or internet explorer. Sometimes you can use compatibility view but other times you need to use XP mode or access the web page through a terminal service.

A lot of it, with IE, boils down to people being ignorant, lazy, naive, and apathetic when it comes to anything technology related. Even when it comes down to security issues, the biggest reason to upgrade IE and Windows (Especially from XP). I mean, when I've (gone stupid) and helped people every time there is a queue of updates for Windows, the antivirus definitions are out of date, and don't even get started on drivers. Even with all the changes to make Windows update automatically and more smoothly, these people don't know much but they somehow figure out how to turn off automatic updates and just let their machines stew in filth, all wondering why they are 'so slow now'.

drescherjm said:

We fight this from time to time at work (medical imaging research). We have to access hospital web sites that require ancient versions of java and/or internet explorer. Sometimes you can use compatibility view but other times you need to use XP mode or access the web page through a terminal service.

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This. There are also insurance payers with websites that absolutely do not work with newer versions of IE. We're forced to use IE 9, otherwise our accounts receivable reps couldn't do their jobs.

Armenius said:

This. There are also insurance payers with websites that absolutely do not work with newer versions of IE. We're forced to use IE 9, otherwise our accounts receivable reps couldn't do their jobs.

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Well, at least IE8+ are still kept up to date. That there's still a considerable percentage that are still using IE6 and IE7 is kind of scary.

Parja said:

Well, at least IE8+ are still kept up to date. That there's still a considerable percentage that are still using IE6 and IE7 is kind of scary.

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Actually Microsoft still supports IE6 and IE7, including updated security patches, etc. They will continue to do so until the XP support cutoff date in April.

mi7chy said:

A lot of corporate users in big institutions don't have the freedom of changing their browser and are stuck with older versions due to compatibility with internal web apps.

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This is bullshit. You can always run FF if you really want to, no matter what permissions you have. Admins can't stop people from running portable apps.

People are lazy and ignorant. Fuck them. I stopped caring about IE6 a long time ago. It's not worth the effort. 7 and 8 users just have to accept stuff being a little bit uglier. Nothing wrong with that.

Sweet. I knew IE would remain the superior browser

dgz said:

This is bullshit. You can always run FF if you really want to, no matter what permissions you have. Admins can't stop people from running portable apps.

People are lazy and ignorant. Fuck them. I stopped caring about IE6 a long time ago. It's not worth the effort. 7 and 8 users just have to accept stuff being a little bit uglier. Nothing wrong with that.

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Of course you can, if you don't care about your job. If a company has an IT department worth a damn, you can bet that they're auditing staff computer usage at irregular intervals. In the healthcare business there is no wiggle room when it comes to security.