14 DAY TRIAL // Internet Explorer 9 is a solid addition to the line up of Microsoft browsers and is a big improvement over its predecessors, but it hasn't helped the company gain any market share overall or even stop the decline. The same goes for Mozilla, Firefox 4 is making huge headway, but Firefox's overall market share is falling.
Meanwhile, Google Chrome's growth has been slowing down, but it's still adding users and market share, while Apple's Safari saw a big boost last month.
The numbers posted by measuring firm Net Applications for the month that just ended, indicate that the two big launches of recent weeks didn't do much for the overall trends.
IE's market share went from 55.92 percent to 55.11 percent, a small drop but one that keeps on adding up. There's some good news for Microsoft though, IE9 now accounts for 2.4 percent of all browsing sessions measured by the analytics firm.
Firefox isn't doing great either, in the first full month of Firefox 4 being available the overall share saw a small drop, after an equally small rise in March. Mozilla's share of the browser market went from 21.80 percent to 21.63 percent in the last month.
Firefox 4 is gaining fast though, it already grabbed 5.4 percent of the overall market, a little over one month after launching, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
This could be seen as a big victory for Mozilla against Microsoft, especially since IE still has more than double Firefox's market share. It clearly is a big boon for Mozilla, but there are a few factors to consider.
Microsoft still hasn't pushed IE9 to all of its users via the Windows Update program. IE9 is also only available in Vista and Windows 7, while Firefox 4 also runs on XP, Mac OS and Linux.