14 DAY TRIAL // The browser market is continuing the trend set in recent months with all major browsers moving in the same direction as before. Internet Explorer saw another big loss, dropping to about a 65-percent market share, Firefox got a very small bump and Google Chrome saw a decent amount of growth considering its size, going from 3.2 percent to 3.6 percent. Opera usage stayed the same with the browser getting 2.2 percent of the market.
The data comes from Net Applications, which relies on a network of over 40,000 websites to compile the numbers after doing some processing on them. So, here's the breakdown. Internet Explorer still enjoys a solid and comfortable lead, with 64.6 percent of the market, roughly three times the size of its closest competitor, Mozilla Firefox. IE usage, though, is going down and the browser has lost market share for yet another month after dropping 1.3 percent points from August to September.
Now it lost a further 0.9 percent points from 65.7 percent in September. This is the fourth consecutive month the browser has lost market share, adding up to a 3.2-percent drop, interestingly, Chrome's entire market share for September. By version number, IE 6 still holds the lead with a 23.3-percent market share, slightly smaller than that of Firefox. IE 7 is second, with 18.2 percent, but it won't be long until IE 8, Microsoft's latest browser version, will surpass it, as it is already at 18.1 percent.
Mozilla's Firefox browser has gained a little more market share, though nothing spectacular. Firefox rose from 23.8 percent in the previous month to 24.1 percent in October. It remains to be seen if the latest Firefox 3.6, which has just launched in beta, will do anything to help that. Google Chrome, though, has been doing well lately, even if it's still far behind the two main competitors, and rose a full 0.4 percent in the last month to reach 3.6 percent. And, with the Chrome 4.0 beta out the door, the trend may very well continue into the future.
