News

IE Dips Below 50 Percent Worldwide, According to StatCounter

• By Chris Paoli
• October 7, 2010

Internet Explorer use dropped to 49.4 percent in October, according to Web analytics company StatCounter in a chart for this month.

In contrast to this month's result, StatCounter previously found that Microsoft's Web browser had a 58.0 percent stake in the market one year ago in October. IE's competitors include Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari and the Opera Internet browser, to name a few.  

Internet Explorer is still well ahead of second-place Firefox at 31.3 percent. However, this month's result appears to be the first time that IE use has dipped below 50 percent, according to StatCounter's data.

"This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, in a press release. "Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67 percent."

Although StatCounter shows the IE browser owning less than half the worldwide market, it still has a 52.3 percent share in North America, with Firefox behind it at 27.2 percent.

The North American decline for IE use, year-over-year, wasn't as drastic as the worldwide figures indicate, as IE use decreased only 3.6 percentage points. Mozilla's Firefox browser experienced an even bigger drop in the North American market, with a loss of four percent points compared with its October 2009 number.

Safari and Chrome appear to be the two big beneficiaries of IE's and Firefox's diminishing use. They held 9.1 percent and 9.9 percent of the browser market, respectively, in September. However, StatCounter shows wild swings in October, pegging Safari at 4.6 percent and Chrome at 12.0 percent.

While StatCounter's analysis of the browser market is a good indication of trends, it isn't 100 percent accurate. The company compiles its findings from a sample of 15 billion page views over three million Web sites per month.

Stat Owl, a competing Web tracking company, had the IE browser finishing off the month of September with 62.7 percent of the market.

In related IE browser usage news, Net Applications, a California-based Web tracking company, shows Internet Explorer 9 had 0.3 percent of the worldwide market since its release to public beta on Sept. 15.