
IE10 falls below IE9 in market share - dabent
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/01/ie10-falls-ie9-market-share-firefox-hits-60-month-low-chrome-gains/
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joshma
Pretty misleading title, since IE10 isn't the latest version. IE11 is the
latest and went from 11.51% to 12.80% (big jump compared to Chrome, 16.28% to
16.84%). Interesting (and slightly sad) that Firefox isn't gaining - in light
of these stats, I'd say things don't look too shabby for IE.

I'm not too familiar with IE (heh), but is the upgrade mechanism better in
IE10? That might explain the higher drop.

~~~
derefr
> Interesting (and slightly sad) that Firefox isn't gaining

I'm guessing this has more to do with Chrome being easier to integrate into
enterprise/group-policy-based deployment than anything to do with the choices
of individual users, though. The only place I see Firefox on a PC in a
"computer lab" or "thin-client" setting any more is when those PCs are also
running Linux.

~~~
broodbucket
Surely nothing to do with the fact that there's television commercials for
Chrome, ads every time you go to the most visited website on the Internet,
etc...

~~~
jordangsu
Chrome is the superior browser, easy to use, syncs nicely, great developer
tools. I'd say that is probably why.

~~~
broodbucket
Turns out "superior browser" is subjective. Firefox has great developer tools
(the built in ones, not to mention Firebug). Firefox syncs nicely (and doesn't
spy on what you sync). Firefox is easy to use.

For the vast majority of users, none of this stuff matters. What matters is
brand recognition and stuff "just working". In-built Flash probably helps
Chrome's case.

It doesn't matter which browser is "winning", the vast majority aren't picking
which browser to use based on features. If Chrome is the "superior browser",
why is IE dominating in market share?

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AshleysBrain
Net Applications apparently have a sample of 40,000 websites, whereas
StatCounter have a sample of 3,000,000 [1]. StatCounter shows radically
different numbers (e.g. Chrome by far the most used, whereas NA shows IE
majority). IMO, StatCounter's numbers are more likely to be accurate.

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/press/open-letter-
ms](http://gs.statcounter.com/press/open-letter-ms)

~~~
azakai
The size of the sample is irrelevant for its accuracy. That seems odd and
statistics can be counterintuitive, but consider how a random sample of a few
hundred people is enough to estimate who will win the elections within a few
%.

What matters - beyond a certain reasonable minimum size, which is a few
hundred - is if the sample is random and unbiased. Both NetApps and
StatCounter are far, far above the minimum size, so the only questions are the
other factors.

But more important to realize here is that they measure different things.
StatCounter measures pages viewed, NetApps unique users. There is no reason to
expect those to match up.

~~~
dangrossman
I (W3Counter, 70k sites) measure unique users, and it's always tracked much
closer to StatCounter's numbers than NetApps. Same for every other site that
tracks this stuff. NetApps has always been an outlier, especially on their IE
numbers.

~~~
randomfool
The difference for NetApps is how they track unique users, particularly for
countries such as China.

My understanding is that they basically look at the total number of unique
visitors from each country that they get, then weight that number by the
number of reported internet users in that country. So if NetApps sees 10 users
from country A and 5 users from country B, but country B has twice as many
'connected' people as country A, then they both get equal share.

What this basically leads to is that China, which has a very large population
of people who infrequently use the internet but are still counted as internet
connected (and may be using shared computers), gets inflated numbers based on
total population. This is also why IE8 numbers are so large- because it's
still in wide use in China.

The NetApps number probably makes sense if you were to ask 'what is the
browser use of the individual users across the entire planet that could
possibly load my website'. But when looking at browser usage by # of page
loads or predicted visitors, the numbers could very well be much closer to
StatCounter.

~~~
azakai
In that example, it is ok for A and B to get equal share - if you are
measuring unique users and not usage. There is no inflation here, at least not
in the methodology, which looks like a valid statistical one to me.

Of course it could be wrong in practice, if the data used to re-weight is
misleading (while the unweighted raw data was more accurate). That's possible
in theory, but seems less likely - there is fairly good information about
internet usage in general which is what is used to re-weight, certainly
compared to browser share.

------
Theodores
These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful
browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get meaningful
figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?

In some ways 'what browser do people use' is a bit like 'what language do
people speak', except it should be easier to measure the statistics. Yet,
unlike the situation with languages, we have a really hazy idea of what
browsers are used. As a developer it is easy to get things working in
developer preferred browsers to then be clueless about what percentage of your
audience use IE and what versions. Does IE7 matter any more, or IE9? Do people
with those browsers almost expect sites to look wrong?

~~~
azakai
> These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful
> browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get
> meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?

It is hard to get a random sample of internet usage. There is just no easy way
- how do you do it?

In theory you would pick a random router around the world, and pick a packet
going through it, and if it comes from a web browser, count that. Then
normalize by traffic amount in that router. That would, in theory, give the
right result with a large enough sample size. But no one (except perhaps the
NSA) can do it.

On the other hand, there are at least two companies that pretty much know the
truth - Google and Facebook. A huge percent of people visit those sites daily,
so much that they don't need to randomly sample, worry about bias factors,
etc. - they can just look at the data they have. So internally, they have the
numbers. But apparently they consider that information valuable, and do not
share it.

~~~
acdha
Google is much better positioned than Facebook for one reason: Google
Analytics. Many sites, even those which aren't otherwise using Google
services, embed it and there's really nothing like its reach because all of
the competing services cost money.

------
sheetjs
Can someone explain why the Net Applications numbers are so different from the
StatCounter numbers? I would expect some variation in counting "users" versus
"page views" but the difference here is stark

~~~
azakai
NetApps measures unique users.

StatCounter measures page views.

Those can be very very different, if some users browser more or if some users
use more than one browser, both of which are probably true.

So it is very possible both are accurate. Or that both are wrong.

------
cpncrunch
I'm a little surprised that their stats show IE having >50% market share. Most
stats show IE having between 18% and 25% market share. My own sites show
between 10% (for a tech site) and 15% (for a health site). I guess Net
Applications is only sampling corporate users, who still tend to use old IE.
My own stats show that IE11 has a higher number of visitors than any other
version of IE.

~~~
jeswin
I'd be surprised if more than 50% of computer users (55% IE * 90% Windows)
changed their default browser. The vast majority of computer users are non-
technical people, and they use the default browser unless someone changes it
for them.

But they also browse (far) less compared to people who use alternate browsers.
So statistically, your sites have a much higher chance of registering Chrome
and Firefox users than IE users.

Add: OTOH, I think StatsCounter, Clicky and Wikimedia stats are more useful.
They represent the "active" Internet population better. The ones who are more
likely to come to your/any website.

~~~
Encosia
+1 for Clicky's stats ([https://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web-
browsers/](https://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/)).

It's also so important to filter down to geographic regions you care most
about when looking at these stats. It's common to see developers/companies
making browser support decisions based on global stats, even when they often
derive most of their profits from a much smaller region (with different
browser usage stats).

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kijin
How reliable are these numbers anyway?

Other commenters have mentioned differences between NetApplications and
StatCounter, but I suspect there are other factors that can heavily skew the
apparent market share of different browsers.

For example, it is already well known that programming-related websites get a
higher than average share of non-IE visitors. I don't think this would affect
the likes of NetApplications and StatCounter, because they're used by all
sorts of websites. But ...

... it is also much easier to find and install an ad blocker in Chrome and
Firefox than it is to do so in IE. Many of those ad blockers and similar
extensions will also block the tracking beacons used by NetApplications and
StatCounter.

This probably has a negative effect on the apparent market shares of Chrome
and Firefox. Especially the latter, I suspect, because lots of people who
consciously choose Firefox nowdays do so for privacy reasons. (Can't trust
Google anymore, etc.)

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djKianoosh
FWIW, several DHS department level IT shops are moving to IE11 in a few
months. I'm at one where after they've been at IE8 for so many years, they
jumped to IE10 last fall and IE11 is around the corner. Love it. It's been so
nice not having to support IE < 10 the last several months.

And IE11's dev tools, while still a little clunky to get around, are very
comparable to Firefox/Chrome for most of the features.

We also still have some users that haven't upgraded (also smaller resolution
monitors) but all less than 10%.

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taylorbuley
To me this just means that on more modern version of Windows more people than
not have enabled auto-updates. I'd guess corporations make up a good chunk of
the staid browsers.

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ZenoArrow
IE9 is probably going to stick around for quite a while, it's the last version
that Vista users have access to. IE8 should start dropping off at a faster
rate after April, but will still be with us due to home owners who don't wish
to upgrade past XP. What will be interesting to see is whether home users
gravitate towards new PCs or tablets.

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hiphopyo
The Android browser is the new IE:

[http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-browser-eternal-
dying](http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-browser-eternal-dying)

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drcoopster
Not a shock, corporate users are still catching up. Most that I've seen are
thankfully off IE6 but only up to 8 or 9.

~~~
xcrunner529
Most here are forced on IE 8 because PeopleSoft doesn't work on anything
greater. It sucks. Luckily, we installed Chrome as a secondary choice for
those who want it. And I work in IT so I install whatever I want :P

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jmnicolas
I don't understand IE7 : if you have it, it means you are able to upgrade from
IE6, so why not IE8 ?

~~~
kamjam
Sometimes it is corporate policy, meaning if you are on a work computer you
can't manually update it yourself.

There are still some legacy applications that require a specific version of
IE, or specific IE functionality, in order to work correctly. The cost of
"fixing" the application to work correctly may cost too much or be too much
effort.

Of course, there may be others who may have no idea how to update, no doubt
there is a whole group of (older) users where auto-update may be turned off
and no idea the update process exists.

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stesch
I know of a bank which had just recently upgraded to IE9. :-(

It's a pain in the ass to support this.

~~~
kamjam
I know how you feel, please sign the petition:
[http://www.saveie6.com/](http://www.saveie6.com/)

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rbanffy
What's wrong with line (or area) charts to chart values that change over time?

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puppetmaster3
I think IE is covered, but: "Android is the new IE".

Think of % of 2.x.

