In addition to the market share of operating systems, Netmarketshare has also published data from web browsers, concluding that Internet Explorer still leads and that Microsoft Edge is no replacement for Chrome or Firefox, at least for now.
All versions of Internet Explorer accounted for half of the market (50.86%). IE 11 is number one with 24.36 percent. It is to be expected because right now it’s the latest and most widely used browser in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Not surprisingly, Internet Explorer 8 is the second in Microsoft web browsers (11.64%), since it is the reference in business environments with applications and services, specifically supported in this release.
As for the new browser, Microsoft Edge, released in Windows 10, it’s not doing well and is no replacement for Chrome or Firefox. Its basic concept goes in the right direction, with a new rendering engine, an interface that focuses on minimalism, higher performance and more compatible with the Web standards in Microsoft’s history. The problem is that it is still very green. It lacks development, improvements and new features, such as the extensions that were delayed till next year.
Thus, Microsoft Edge occupies only 2.66 percent of the market. It has been around only three months in the market and it’s exclusively made for Windows 10, but its share is one third of that, which indicates that users are using IE 11, which is also included, or alternatives like Chrome, Firefox or Opera. Once upgraded, Microsoft could choose to release it for other Windows versions and even other platforms to increase market share.
Out of IE, Chrome is the main alternative with a 31.12 percent share, while Firefox has 11.64%, Apple’s Safari 5%, and Opera a 1.28%. There’s a worrying fall in Mozilla’s application share that we already saw in previous months with data from the other analytics firm, StatCounter. Interestingly in a moment when Firefox is better than ever, and today we have presented you the new 42 version with important news.