Firefox and Chrome Lose Market Share to Internet Explorer in July

The July web browser market share numbers from Net Applications are out and they paint an interesting picture, showing Microsoft Internet Explorer gaining the smallest bit of market share, mostly from Mozilla Firefox but also from Google Chrome. IE only grew by 0.42 percent points last month, but it’s still an upward move from a browser that most considered would continue to lose users to the benefit of both Firefox and Chrome.

“Internet Explorer extended its usage share gains by another .42% in July, gaining about 1% global share since May. This is the second month in a row of global gains for Internet Explorer and the third straight month of gains for Internet Explorer 8 in the United States. The gain comes at the expense of Firefox (-.9%) and Chrome (-.08%).Internet Explorer 8.0 extended its lead as the world's leading browser by gaining .98% share globally (all editions included),” Net Applications commented.

Mozilla Firefox saw another month of decline. After peaking in April, with 24.59 percent of the market, Firefox has been losing users, with the previous month being the biggest single drop of almost 1 percent point, going from 23.81 percent to 22.91 percent usage worldwide. Measurements from other parties also show Firefox stagnating or slowly declining, but most of this has been attributed to Google Chrome and not IE, so far.

Speaking of Google Chrome, according to Net Applications numbers, July 2010 was the first month it declined since the browser was launched, losing a tiny fraction, 0.08 percent, of its market share. With a number this small, the decline could easily be attributed the inherent inaccuracies in measuring the browser market share.

Everyone else saw growth in July, Opera gained 0.18 percent points, a modest growth but growth nonetheless. Safari also gained market share, going from 4.85 percent to 5.09 percent. While IE has now grown for two months straight, it’s too early to say if this is really a trend.