Study: Internet Explorer continues to lose market share

TechWorld.com - Microsoft Corp.'s share of the browser market has continued to slip, according to a new study, indicating continued momentum for users switching to Internet Explorer alternatives.
Between the beginning of December and mid-January, Explorer's market share dropped 1.5 perrcentage points to 90.3%, while The Mozilla Project's Firefox browser rose 0.9 perrcentage points to a total of 5%, according to market researcher WebSideStory Inc. Researchers have shown Explorer's market share falling since June, when WebSideStory pegged the browser's market share at 95.5%.
Other browsers, including Opera and Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac-only Safari, also gained just under 1perrcentage point between them to account for 2.1% of the market, WebSideStory said.
Figures from OneStat.com that were released late last year reflect the same trend, although with different figures. OneStat found that Explorer held roughly 95% of the market last May but was down to 88.9% at the end of November. Meanwhile, Firefox and other Mozilla browsers rose 5 percentage points over the same period to hit 7.4%. Both companies track Web user activity from more than 100 countries.
Users and developers have long taken issue with Explorer over frequent security problems and the lack of features that have become standard in the competition, but only in the past six months have users begun to ditch Microsoft's browser in significant numbers.
Firefox still appears to be maintaining the momentum of its highly publicized 1.0 launch 10 weeks ago -- The Mozilla Project says users have downloaded more than 19 million copies of the browser. But it could ultimately be stalled at a low figure by factors such as incompatibility with some Web sites. Enterprises also frequently build in-house applications on the proprietary Microsoft technology supported by Explorer, a factor Microsoft says it is counting on to maintain its dominance. If nothing else, Explorer is necessary for accessing Microsoft's Windows Update site.
It is ultimately in enterprises' interest to support open standards rather that proprietary technology, since every Explorer-centric application increases a business's dependence on Microsoft, according to Francois Bancilhon, CEO of Linux vendor Mandrakesoft SA.
"Our customers tell us there are two driving forces behind switching from Windows to Linux: cost, and vendor independence," Bancilhon told Techworld. "Ultimately, one of the ways the desktop will evolve from Windows to Linux is by replacing the applications running on top of the operating system. Once customers move to OpenOffice and Mozilla, changing the underlying OS is a no-brainer."