14 DAY TRIAL // Throughout 2008, Internet Explorer has been in a free-fall feeding the growth of rivals such as Firefox and, towards the end of the year, that of Google Chrome. Internet Explorer 8 cannot come any faster for Microsoft, as the Redmond company is seeing its share of the browser market eroded continually, with Mozilla, Google, and even Apple increasingly gaining ground into what has been IE territory. However, with IE8 past Beta 2 stage, and with the Release Candidate build around the corner, IE has continued on its downward trajectory, losing yet more of its installed base to Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari, dropping to an usage share of just 68.15%, according to Net Applications.
“Firefox is unquestionably the biggest winner in 2008, gaining approximately twice as much as its closest competitor, and taking more share from Microsoft than all other browsers combined. Adding more than 4.5 points (a ~25% improvement) to where it started the year, Firefox couldn't be better positioned for 2009 and the upcoming round of releases from all the major vendors,” Asa Dotzler, director of Community Development, commented.
Moreover, in the context in which Firefox is unquestionably the biggest winner in 2008, IE is the unalienable loser of the browser wars this past year. The end of December 2008 found IE at just 68.15% of the market, down from 76.04% back in December 2007. During the same period Firefox grew from just 16.80% to a share of over 20%, namely 21.34%. Google Chrome, inexistent at the start of the year in terms of usage, is no longer the king of the sub-1% browsers, and out of Beta stage, has jumped to an usage share of 1.04%. Apple's Safari is also one of the browsers eating away at Internet Explorer, having grown from under 6% to no less than 7.93%. Opera is the sole exception to the rule of rival-IE browsers increasing their installed base on the desktop, as it is nearly stationary at approximately 0.7% of the market.
“As with the month of December, the entire year has been bad, just awful, really really bad for Internet Explorer. IE has dropped just about 8 points!! since this time last year. That's twice the amount it lost the year before. They're not just falling, they're falling a lot faster. They've got huge advantages owning the desktop and even that isn't saving them. Consider that they've lost 8 points of the browser market in a year where 300 million new computers shipped with IE as the default browser. That can't be encouraging for them,” Dotzler added.
Google Chrome is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Windows is available here.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Linux is available here.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Mac OS X is available here.
Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 for Windows is available for download here.
Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 for Linux is available for download here.
Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.
