The End OF Internet Explorer?

Jun.26.2009 Browsers

There is a lot of discussion amongst the web design and development community about the future of Internet Explorer in general  and more specifically whether to continue designing with IE6 users in mind, with campaigns being set up to move people away from IE6 and magazine articles calling for designers to boycott IE6. The browser wars are also hotting up with Microsoft launching IE8, Apple launching Safari 4.0 and Mozilla launching FireFox 3.5 in 2009. In light of all this we thought we would take a more detailed look at which browsers our site’s visitors have been using since the turn of the year and the results are very interesting…

In January Internet Explorer was the most used browser with a 50.41% share of visits and Firefox was second coming in with 10% less traffic at 40.63% of the share. However, every month so far this year we have seen a steady decline in Internet Explorer users and an increase for FireFox, Safari and Chrome. IE nearly lost the number 1 spot in |March, hanging on by 0.4%, but was finally dislodged by FF in April and has not looked like reclaiming this position since.

It is ironic that IE’s decline started at around the same time as IE8 was taken out of Beta and made available for general download and it slipped in to 2nd place the same month the final version was released. If we look at the browser version being used in more detail we can see IE6 usage is on the decline although nowhere near at the rate of IE7 suggesting the majority of IE8 users are upgrading from IE7 rather than IE6 (IE6 users really do like their browser! A note to the person who used IE 4.0 in May, please upgrade to something else, anything!)

From the data in the first graph we can see that IE7 and IE6 users are jumping ship and moving over to one of the alternatives rather than simply upgrading.

To be fair, our site’s visitors and users are inherently more technically minded than the average internet user and more involved in the development of the internet as an entity in itself and I would argue that FireFox is more likely to be used by this group. However, although the global statistics for web browser usage still show Internet Explorer is the most used browser the decline of Internet Explorer is still clear as is the rise of FireFox, Chrome and Safari.

It may seem that this can only be accelerated by Microsoft removing IE from the next Windows launch in response to the EU Parliaments anti-trust action against them,  this announcement was however treat with some scepticism.

It was also critical of the Microsofts apparent plan to sell retail copies of Windows 7 without any web browser at all, which could set up a potential Catch-22 situation in that the ploy might make it impossible for buyers to initially access the Internet at all in order to download any alternative web browser.

The EC statement said, “In terms of potential remedies, if the Commission were to find that Microsoft had committed an abuse, the Commission has suggested that consumers should be offered a choice of browser not that Windows should be supplied without a browser at all.”

The chief complainant in the European browser case against Microsoft says the move to strip Internet Explorer out of Windows 7 in Europe is an insufficient step that will not lead to better competition in the browser market.

In an interview, Opera chief technology officer Håkon Wium Lie said that with regulators threatening action, Microsoft was under pressure to do something, but said that its choice was not what Opera was looking for. Lie went on to say that Opera wants people to have access to more browsers, not fewer.

“I don’t believe this is going to restore competition in the marketplace,” he said.

Instead, Lie favours a proposal that the European regulators have been considering that would require users to be given a choice to download one or more browsers the first time they access the internet.

“We would like to give users a genuine choice,” Lie said. The remedy that the European Commission has been discussing, a so-called ‘must-carry’ remedy, would be a better solution, he said.

Microsoft acknowledged in a blog posting that regulators could still force that to happen.

“Our decision to only offer IE separately from Windows 7 in Europe cannot, of course, preclude the possibility of alternative approaches emerging through Commission processes,” deputy general counsel Dave Heiner said in the blog.

But Heiner said Microsoft believes its move puts it in compliance with European law.

“We believe that this new approach, while not our first choice, is the best path forward given the ongoing legal case in Europe,” he wrote. “It will address the ‘bundling’ claim while providing European consumers with access to the full range of Windows 7 benefits that will be available in the rest of the world.”

Is your website seeing a similar trend and what are your thoughts on how Microsoft can reclaim their dominance of the market (or even if that is possible now)?

Note: The data used in this post is taken from the top 5 browsers for each month. The percentage figures represent their share of that total and not the total percentage share of the entire site/ all browsers.

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