Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser had less than 50% market share in September, recording the biggest decline in its history. According to market analysis company StatCounter, global browser usage was 49.87%, a much lower figure compared with when the program won the battle against Netscape in the 90s, capturing most of the market.
StatCounter also says that Mozilla’s Firefox, in second place, has 31.5% of the browser market, while Google’s Chrome is third, with 11.54%. However, the program has tripled its usage since the same period last year. According to a report from the Softpedia website, Chrome is the fastest-growing browser. The rest of the market is divided among browsers with smaller shares, such as Opera and Apple’s Safari.
Two years ago, Internet Explorer had two-thirds of the browser market, and the analysis company believes that not even the new version, IE 9, can reverse the situation.
StatCounter’s CEO, Aodhan Cullen, said in a statement that “this is a great moment in the browser wars”. “I believe the agreement Microsoft made with the European Union to allow users to choose their browsers in Windows contributed to this decline in Internet Explorer”.
Source: G1