Internet Explorer is free falling

Robin Good notes that Internet Explorer Has Now Lost 30% Of The Browser Market.

The numbers for this site agree. A year ago, IE was used by 48.2 percent of my visitors. Now that figure is down to 29 percent. During the same period of time, the use of Gecko based browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino) has increased from 33.4 percent to 56.1 percent. Amazing. (More on browser stats in my post Browser statistics and choices from December 1, 2004.)

Posted on January 4, 2005 in Browsers, Quicklinks

Comments

  1. January 4, 2005 by Andrew Hume

    Agreed.

    IE use on usabletype.com for December was less than 20%. Firefox about 38%.

    Things are happening…

  2. January 4, 2005 by Jero

    I don’t think we should celebrate yet. Different sites target different a audience. 456 Berea Street for example, targets mainly web authors who are more aware of what’s happening in the internet world than a “normal” internet user. So numbers of only one website, or a small network isn’t very accurate so it’s hard to guess the real percentage.

    But lets hope I’m either wrong or IE is really making a free fall.

  3. January 4, 2005 by Roger Johansson (Author comment)

    Jero: Sure, this site has a pretty specialised audience. It’s still very nice to see so many web professionals moving away from IE.

  4. January 5, 2005 by Arve

    Dom’t celebrate. Not yet, at least.

    My own blog has always had a high share of alternative browsers, including “any Gecko”, Opera and Safari.

    Problem is: my audience is mostly a tech audience. At the 26th of December last year, I made one posting regarding the Tsunami Disaster which is getting thousands and thousands of hits from Google (more than 11 000 in four and a half days). What I observed was:

    • Most of these “new visitors” (about 95%) are using Internet Explorer.
    • I am encouraging Internet Explorer users to switch
    • I monitor outbound clicks for Opera and Firefox from the upgrade encouragement: Clickthrough rate is a little below 0.5%. Those who click are equally interested in Opera and Firefox.

    However: IE is losing market share, but not at the rate I would like to see. I do, however, believe that people are going to switch, but the real avalanche of switchers won’t come until September or October 2005.

  5. January 12, 2005 by Roger Johansson (Author comment)

    Arve: The switching rate is bound to be different on different kinds of sites. What’s most important is that it’s happening at all.

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