Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) gained almost a full percentage point of the browser market share in the past month, chipping away at its competitors.
According to the latest data from Net Market Share, Internet Explorer is currently at 53.83% of the global browser share. Firefox follows with 20.55%, while Chrome is on 18.57%, Safari at 5.07% and Opera at 1.62%.
Net Market Share says: “With a gain of .99% last month and a net gain of 1.2% global usage share over the last five months, Internet Explorer has stabilised and even reversed its usage share declines of the last few years.”
Between May 2011 and February 2012, Internet Explorer was on a slow decline from 57.15% to 52.84%. Microsoft's director of IE product marketing, Roger Capriotti, says: “As March comes to a close and we review the latest usage share data from Net Applications, we continue to see great strides made against our core metric: IE9 share on Windows 7.
“This month, in the US, nearly 50% of Windows 7 users are experiencing the best the Web has to offer with IE9 and, around the world, almost 35% of Windows 7 users are browsing with IE9.”
Mobile metrics
Overall, IE8 is still the most widely used browser, with 25.4% of the market, while IE9 follows with 15.17%. Chrome 17 is the third most common browser at 14.17%, followed by Firefox 10 on 7.79%. Microsoft is also due to release Internet Explorer 10 with Windows 8 in both desktop and “Metro-style” for tablets.
Chrome has seen its third consecutive month of decline, dropping from its peak of 19.11% market share in December to 18.57%. In February, it was noted that Google's January decision to lower the page rank of Chrome in search results for at least two months resulted in a loss of browser market share to competitors.
In terms of mobile browser statistics, Safari dominates with 60.54% of the market, according to Net Applications. Google's Android comes in second with 18.3%, while Opera Mini takes 15.39%. BlackBerry and Symbian lag with 1.73% and 1.56% respectively. Microsoft lags significantly in the mobile space with only 0.5% browser market share.
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