Windows 7: IE Market Share Drops Below 50 Percent

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser fell below 50 percent worldwide market share for the first time last month, according to data from StatCounter.



IE captured 49.87 percent of the worldwide market last month, followed by Mozilla's Firefox with 31.5 percent, and Google's Chrome with 11.54 percent, StatCounter said.

Hitslink still report ~59.65%. I'd trust that one, no offense

No, Internet Explorer did not lose 10% market share in just a few days. Since the start of October reports have placed IE at either just under 60% (Net Applications) of the browser market, or lower than 50% (StatCounter).

They both can’t be right, can they? Well, fact is that no, and the difference can be easily explained by the methodologies applied by the two Internet metrics firms.

"The company's research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google's Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year,” StatCounter noted yesterday.

Earlier this month, Net Applications published its own statistics, revealing that IE was at 59.65%, with Firefox following with 22.96% and Chrome at 7.98%.

“IE8 continued its growth this month, making our browser usage share growth 0.57% for our current offerings (IE8 and IE9) in September,” said Ryan Gavin, Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing.

“We are pleased to report that customers are choosing more modern browsers, as evident by the continued decline of IE6 and IE7 usage (drops of 0.63% and 0.50% respectively in September according to Net Applications). This is goodness for the industry as a whole.”

Do people use their browser based on the percentage of other people who use it as well? I mean, I'm no more or less inclined to use Google Chrome if it's market share is 5% or 45%.