14 DAY TRIAL // 2011 year was an interesting year in the browser market, albeit a rather predictable one. Internet Explorer lost a bit of market share each month, Google Chrome gained a bit to almost double its share from the start of 2011 and Firefox stagnated.
That's according to Net Applications data, others show a better defined battle, with Chrome gaining on both IE and Firefox, but the overall trend is about the same.
Even with Internet Explorer 9 launching as the best IE to date and a serious contender, finally, to the other browsers, Microsoft was unable to retain its huge share of the browser market.
It still owns half of the desktop browser market, but IE is on its way down.
Firefox, which has for long been the number two most popular browser, and still is according to some metrics, hasn't been able to gain anything in 2011, though it hasn't lost that much either.
The rising star is, as in the previous couple of years, Google Chrome, which managed to go from 10.38 percent in December 2010 to 19.11 percent market share in December 2011.
At that same time, IE lost almost eight percent points, going from 59.26 percent to 51.87 percent market share.
Chrome's growth came mostly at the expense of IE, but Firefox lost a couple of percent points as well. In the meantime, Safari gained one percent point while Opera lost about 0.5 percent points.
As for 2012, there doesn't seem to be anything that is going to reverse the trends. Google Chrome is probably going to continue to gain market share, mostly at the expense of IE and possibly at the expense of Firefox as well.
It's hard to say whether Chrome will reach an upper limit on growth and whether it will start adding new users more slowly. Likewise, it's hard to say where or if IE's drop will stop.
The biggest unknown though is probably Firefox. It could go either way. On the one hand, it could continue to linger while Chrome and IE battle it out.
It could start losing users as people start switching to Chrome. Or it could start gaining back thanks to the new nimble release cycle and the faster rate at which new features and improvements are added.