Internet Explorer share dips below 50% mark

The market share of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has crashed below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time, a press note issued by StatCounter says.

The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats found that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September. Firefox with 31.5% was the next most popular browser.

In contrast, Google Chrome continued to increase its market share, and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.

“This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%.”

He added that Microsoft’s agreement with European Commission competition authorities to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March may have tipped IE below 50% globally.

In Europe, IE market share has fallen to 40.26% in September this year from 46.44% in September last year. In North America IE is still above 50% at 52.3% followed by Firefox at 27.21% and Chrome at 9.87%.
StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected by

StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.

Tags: Browser wars, Firefox, Google Chrome, IE, Internet Explorer, Safari