While the trend is certainly easy to see I still have a problem believing that I.E.’s market share has dropped below 50%. Most users are probably too lazy to change what comes pre-installed on their box.
The global market share of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer fell below 50% in September, a milestone in the web browser wars that started in the mid-1990s, a research firm says.At the end of September, IE’s share dropped to 49.87%, StatCounter reported Tuesday. Just two years ago, IE dominated the market with a 67% share.
This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” Aodhan Cullen, chief executive of StatCounter, said in a statement.
The research firm found that the rising star in the browser market was Google’s Chrome, which has tripled its share to 11.54% in September from 3.69% the same month a year ago. In June, Chrome overtook Apple Safari for the first time in the U.S. Mozilla Firefox holds the second largest market share with 31.5%.
Microsoft has been the powerhouse in the browser market since the company started bundling IE with Windows in order to compete with Navigator, a browser launched in 1994 by Netscape Communications Corp. By leveraging its Windows monopoly, Microsoft contributed to the eventual demise of Netscape.
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