Asa Dotzler recently pointed out that since October 2004, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been losing market share to Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Google Chrome (yeah, Google Chrome). Here’s graph from Mr. Dotzler’s post:
From the data, you can see the steady decline of Internet Explorer’s share from a high of 90% to somewhere below 70%. 20 percent in five years is not a drastic slide, but I think it’s alarming nonetheless. On the other had, Firefox has broken through the 20% ceiling and Safari approaching 10%. Google Chrome is the little browser that could with 1%.
If this trend continues, we may see Firefox and Internet Explorer having an almost even split in two to three years. Barring any significant moves from the browser makers, Firefox would be the preferred browser in half a decade.
If the estimate is that one in five people are using Firefox, one in ten people are using Safari and one in a hundred people are using Chrome, I could infer that browser users are slowly “out-growing” the default browser offering in Windows and more people are buying Macs. Could this mean that the online experience delivered by Internet Explorer is getting to people?
In any case, this is a good trend for Web Standards as the data is moving in a faforable direction.
