14 DAY TRIAL // Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera are all going nowhere fast. All is quiet on the multiple fronts of the browser war. Dead quiet as a matter of fact. It still remains to be seen if a storm will ensue, but the statistics published by Net Applications for the past month indicate an overall stagnation on the browser market. The lockdown is virtually unnatural, and defying of the perpetual oscillations associated with the evolution of each browser's audience.
The data indicates that Internet Explorer barely moved from a market share of 77.86% in September to just 77.87% in October. In this context, the uptake of Windows Vista has done little to boost the share of IE, even though Microsoft's latest operating system jumped over half a point in the past couple of months. But at the same time, stagnation is nothing but good news for IE, as the Redmond company's browser has managed in this manner to break a long lasting descendant trajectory, that has seen it sink under the 80% milestone. IE has hit a new low in September, and not dropping further is a success onto itself.
But the phenomenon has also affected the remaining main players on the browser market. Firefox went down from 14.88% to just 14.85% in the past two months, but the percentage lost is just as well as insignificant. Apple's browser market share also eroded a tad from 5.07% in September to 5.05% in October. Opera is the browser with the most consistent growth, jumping from 0.87% to 0.99%.
October is nothing short of a general respiro, with the four main competitors on the browser market catching their breath. But don't by any manner expect the situation to last. The browser equation, intimately connected with each product's audience is bound to continue its variable dance for the months to come.
