

IE9 passes 20% market share, Firefox falls below 20%, Chrome loses users - mkwayisi
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/01/ie9-passes-20-market-share-firefox-falls-below-20-chrome-loses-users-second-month-in-a-row/

======
elchief
Please remember that IE6 is barely used in NorAm and Europe (0.59% NorAm from
statcounter). It's mostly in China. If China is not your target market, please
ignore IE6.

~~~
jsdalton
This is from one of the sites (North American B2B publication) I manage that's
been around a few years:

<http://i.imgur.com/WADrl.png>

(The top blue line is total Internet Explorer visits.)

The data backs up what you are saying. IE6 is definitely dead!

------
zizee
It would be really nice if Google published their browser usage stats based on
their Google analytics data. If anyone could have accurate numbers it would be
Google.

~~~
Steko
As long as we're asking, a pony would also be really nice.

~~~
alanh
There’s no need to mock people.

------
paupino_masano
I actually do most of my debugging in IE now - and I've actually come to like
the devkit they've got going. Ok, I am developing for internal intranets which
of which my primary is IE, but they've actually come a long way. In terms of
PC browsers (Mac is a different story) I'd probably put Chrome first, IE
second and Firefox third.

I still prefer Chrome, but partly because it is my preferred browser on Mac
too - I like consistency. I also think that their devkit is ever so slightly
better... but in saying that I'm not unhappy with IE - it does what I tell it
to do, it's fairly consistent and feels quite light (compared to Firefox which
still feels heavy to me even after their improvements...). Admittedly there
are some tricks you need to learn in the IE devkit (e.g. add an attribute of
style to create new CSS definitions) but all in all I think they've done a
pretty good job at cleaning up their act!

PS: I used to do ALL my development in Firefox with Firebug and the Webdev
kit. I find now that Chrome/IE handles things very well: though Chrome still
allows me to install the Webdev kit if I need it (e.g. rulers, security checks
etc). I guess I switch browser camps often based on my needs :)

~~~
iamleppert
How can you possibly say IE's F9 Developer Tools are anything more than barely
workable? Ugh.

------
jeremyjh
I have to use IE 9 some at work and lately I've not been opening Firefox
unless I'm debugging a website. IE 9 is just pretty decent most of the time.

At home I switched back from Chrome to Firefox this spring. I think Firefox
performs better on Ubuntu. On the Win 7 netbook I share with my wife we run
only Chrome.

So uhm, I guess my story is that all three of those mainstream browsers are
totally decent these days.

~~~
sharkweek
I forgot who talked about it (one of the leads from one of those three) and he
said long gone are the days of seeing browsers massively outperform one
another.

For the internet savvy, it's more a feature competition at this point mixed
with user loyalty (Firefox, you'll always have my heart, even if Chrome is
better)

------
ricardobeat
<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-sa-monthly-201110-201210>

------
mtgx
I don't trust Net Application's data. They always seem to show either IE or
iOS mobile share being much, much larger than what the numbers of those
devices would suggest.

~~~
ricardobeat
statcounter puts IE9 at 17%, not that far off:
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-
ww-monthly-201110-201210)

~~~
mtgx
It also shows Chrome at double of what Net Apps says. I've been following
Chrome's growth over the years, and the Statcounter number for Chrome seems a
lot more likely than the Net Apps one.

~~~
Steko
Statcounter doesn't count users, it counts raw hits. Both numbers are relevant
for different reasons. If you agree that Chrome users surf more this could
easily account for most of the difference.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers>

~~~
mtgx
That is strange, because Net Apps also counts the iOS browser (iPhone, iPod
touch, iPad) as something like 50-60% market share, when there are only 400
million iOS devices and 500 million Android devices. I doubt the majority of
Android users have never used the browser.

~~~
Steko
Wild guesses:

(1) I've heard the old Android browser on some phones can report it's user
agent as safari or some generic looking webkit that might get folded into
safari numbers.

(2) site bias? Purely as an illustrative example imagine if Apple.com was one
of the sites in Net Apps network while Android.com was in the Statcounter
network.

(3) actually accurate. The wikimedia numbers are 10% mobile safari and 4.5%
android.

------
FrojoS
"[..] IE6 fell 0.37 percentage points (losing everything it somehow managed to
gain the previous month)[..]"

And whats their error margin? Sounds like bad journalism to me.

------
jeffisabelle
oh, this made me look at google analytics instantly. my blog is still safe
with 6.68% `total` IE visits.

------
leeoniya
every time these statistics come up, i will post the last 2 weeks from my own
server. pretty much 100% US/CA audience. site category is home remodeling,
DIY, contractors.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgXFz9xLvI4UdHp...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgXFz9xLvI4UdHpGR2RNTlpweENyTEhyWExrWXdiRUE)

------
jamesbrennan
Does anyone have some insight into why IE6 has a greater marketshare than IE7?

~~~
sek
China, it's almost non existent anywhere else. Even the "enterprise" upgraded
to IEX but they probably skip IE7 when they do that. For intranet stuff maybe
still some IE6, but not much left i guess.

------
rorrr
I see tons of ads for IE. Never for FF. Microsoft's marketing is working.

FF is slower than Chrome (at least the desktop versions).

FF still doesn't have separate processes for tabs, so when one fails, the
whole browser crashes.

~~~
w1ntermute
> FF is slower than Chrome (at least the desktop versions).

This is a misconception held by people that haven't used Firefox as of late. I
actually frequently encounter crashes in Chrome, whereas I do not with
Firefox.

~~~
jimwalsh
Not it's actually still very slow. Theres a JS demo ever 3 days on HN that
runs terribly in FF. Plenty of other 'pushing the envelope' demos do the same
thing to FF. To their credit the FF team is usually here, or finds them, and
bugs are quickly reported.

~~~
w1ntermute
The funny thing is, most users don't care about how their browser performs in
"'pushing the envelope' demos" - they care about how it performs when they're
_browsing the web_.

------
bravoyankee
Firefox is horribly slow, and I don't even mean in comparison to Chrome. It's
slow in its own right.

The constant updates? I'm getting used to it (although I can't really tell a
difference one version to the next). It's the slowness and the crashing that
gets to me.

Chrome has me spoiled I guess.

~~~
darklajid
I .. believe you, I guess. You obviously tried the current versions and they
weren't for you. Still, I'm baffled.

I removed Chrome from my Android devices (what for?) and only have it on my
desktop machines for tests. I start it once every fortnight.

Firefox, with its sync feature, keeps my browsing experience in order. I've to
admit that I'm using the Beta 'channel' on both Windows and Android. The
readability mode is amazing. My add-ons are really helpful.

Oh - and I didn't even mention that it's the fastest browser on an Android
device for all I can tell (and so fast on my desktop that I couldn't give the
crown to either IE, Chrome or FF - they all are plenty fast and good enough).

While I might sound a bit like a fan here (and I admit that I do like that
browser quite a bit), I wonder what provoked your 'na na na na na!' Nelson
style answer. The speed issue seems to be .. debatable / bad luck. Frequent
updates are bad, but Chrome is good? Uhm.. Hard to take that serious.

Let's relax. I think that there's no need to argue about the value FF brought
to the web. You might prefer 'newer' contestants and that's really fine! But
bashing open-source projects that are alive, kicking and innovating, with some
not-quite-that-creative broad 'ugh, slooow' criticism isn't .. nice or useful.
In my world, at least.

~~~
bravoyankee
I'm lamenting the poor performance of the browser. I have nothing but massive
respect for the developers.

But I marvel at the difference and see that even with all these updates, the
gap between Chrome and Firefox gets wider and wider.

~~~
shardling
That's not a universal perception. Perhaps there is something borked with your
firefox install.

~~~
bravoyankee
Or maybe it's not Firefox at all, but rather my Chrome install went better
than normal and has resulted in abnormally good performance.

------
neoswf
Paid article by Microsoft.

