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Only 53% market share for Internet Explorer in Europe

Microsoft is determined to tumble faster

Publish date: 2010-07-30

The French AT Internet Institute published the latest browser barometer for Europe in which Microsoft's browser has only a 53% global market share in Europe. Microsoft's plans to release the next version 9 of its browser not for Windows XP will surely help the market share tumble even faster.

Back in the year 2003 Microsoft's Internet Explorer had a near monopoly in the browser market, with almost 95% market share. As the web became more important and more web-enabled features, games and applications became available, the browser became ever more important: speed, standards, security, features, video all started to matter. This allowed alternatives such as Mozilla's Firefox and recently Google's Chrome to get a stronghold in the market, because they were innovating where Microsoft was not. This led to the long tumble in Internet Explorer's market share.

Some countries are doing better for Internet Explorer than others: The United Kingdom's and Italy's share is still topping 60%, while Germany's is below 40%. However, Internet Explorer is rapidly losing share in all countries.

Microsoft's decision to make the browser's next version only available in Windows Vista and Windows 7 will surely not reverse the trend, but rather accomplish the opposite. As to date, Windows XP is still used by the mayority of all Windows users. Not releasing the latest version of the browser for that platform will trigger more than a few to look for alternatives that will display the latest hot websites that require the newest technologies.

More info: AT Internet Institute article