With Firefox 3.5 already at its 14 million downloads, and both Safari and Chrome gaining significant download numbers as well, it looks like Microsoft has to make some more campaign for IE8. Reporting on a StatCounter browser market share statistics, TechCrunch is reporting that the combined numbers of all IE versions except IE8 have significantly decreased to around 11.4% since March 2007.
IE7’s market share is showing a decreasing trend as well from as high as 49% to 30.1 percent in July. But that is understandable since IE8 is gaining grounds. And possibly more IE7 users are finally upgrading to IE8. But we should not also discount the fact that the share of other browsers are steadily increasing at the same time that IE’s market share has been decreasing.
The good news is (well at least for Microsoft) since March, IE8’s market share is on a increasing trend. But that should not make Microsoft stop from promoting IE8 just yet, as surely Firefox 3.5 and possibly updates from Chrome and Safari might pull it down, just what happened to IE6 and IE7.
Once more updates come in for the other browsers, we will see if IE8 could achieve what its predecessor has achieved before. Or whether the promise of better, faster and leaner alternatives will prevent IE8 from repeating this feat?
