A lot less people are annoyed enough with IE9 to switch than with IE8 or IE7

May 8, 2012 17:21 GMT  ·  By

StatCounter has even more surprising browser usage data to uncover. After showing that Chrome is slowly taking over as king of the browsers (on the desktop) and that IE usage drops dramatically during weekends, at the same time that Chrome spikes, it's now pointing out an even more interesting trend, IE9 usage spikes during the weekend, just like Chrome.

"We have previously noted that Google's Chrome peaks at the weekend at the expense of IE. This seems to suggest that many home (as opposed to business) users prefer Chrome to IE," Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, said.

"However, having drilled down further into our data, we have released a new statistic which allows the comparison of Chrome (all versions combined)* with the individual versions of other browsers," he added.

"This shows that while IE6, 7 and 8 usage falls off at the weekend, IE9 spikes. This indicates that IE9 is bucking the trend of previous IE versions and is gaining home user traction," he said.

Google Chrome usage is the biggest during the weekend, its market share spikes by a few percentage points every time. IE's market share, on the other hand, drops during the same time. The behaviour is easily explained, people are forced to use IE at work, but they're free to use it at home.

Interestingly, only IE8 and IE7 show this behavior, the latest IE9 actually gains market share during the weekends. This would seem to suggest that people tend to upgrade their browsers more often at home, a likely scenario, and also that they don't mind IE9 as much as previous versions, not enough to make them switch anyway.

But it's important to keep in mind that we're talking about market share here, fewer people may actually be using IE9, or Chrome for that matter, during the weekends, but those that do outnumber those that are stuck with IE8 or older versions.