14 DAY TRIAL // The new Edge browser integrated into Windows 10 on both PCs and smartphones is rapidly losing users, as it lacks essential functionality such as extensions and support for ad blockers.
Statistics provided by various research companies and put together by CW shows that Microsoft Edge has significantly lost users in the last three months, with the majority of early adopters jumping ship because of the lack of features.
Net Applications, for example, claims the market share of Microsoft Edge dropped from 36.2 percent in September to 31.2 percent in November, and the decline is very likely to continue this month too, especially because Threshold 2 brought only small changes to the browser.
StatCounter has different market share stats for Edge, but these also shows a dropping trend in the last three months. Microsoft’s new browser declined from 13.9 percent in September to 12.9 percent last month while in the United States it went down from 18.1 percent to 17.7 percent.
And last but not least, the US Digital Analytics Program indicates that Microsoft Edge browser experienced a decline from 24.6 percent in September to 22.4 percent in November.
Extensions just around the corner
A quick look in the Windows 10 Feedback app shows that most of the users who’d normally make Edge their daily browser are disappointed with the lack of features and no extension support is said to be one of the main problems.
But judging by recent leaks, extension support for Microsoft Edge is just around the corner, and Redmond is likely to ship preview builds of Windows 10 to insiders that would include such functionality in just a few weeks.
All Windows 10 users are expected to get extension support in the summer of 2016 with the Redstone update that will bring, among others, this eagerly-anticipated feature on PCs running the new OS. Mobile devices will also get extension support at a later time.
