Internet Explorer’s share of the global browser market continued to trend downward in January, according to Web-tracking firm Net Applications. Microsoft’s popular Web browser fell from a 68.15 percent market share in December to 67.55 percent in January, and has declined by more than seven percent since March 2008.
IE also suffered share losses in November and December, but Net Applications noted late last year that the holiday season strongly favors residential over business use and predicted this would increase “the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage.” However, January’s market-share numbers show that IE’s slide has reached its lowest level since the Web metrics tracker began quantifying browser usage in 2005.
Opera Standstill
Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari browsers reaped incremental gains in January in comparison with the previous month and have grown their respective market shares by more than four percent and three percent during the past 12 months. Even Chrome’s market share grew from 1.04 percent in December to 1.12 percent in January, Net Applications noted.
By contrast, Opera’s market share has remained stuck around the 0.7 percent mark for more than a year, according to the latest data. Nevertheless, Opera Software intends to continue pursuing its strategy of producing “a great browsing experience,” noted Tor Odland, Opera’s communications director.
“We are not planning to do something radically different, but will stick to our plans and have new products and services out later this year,” Odland said. “One of the potential opportunities is to do advertising in the future, but has not been confirmed yet.”
Odland said Net Applications’ statistics may be accurate when it comes to Opera’s use in the United States, but don’t reflect Opera’s growth overseas. “And we certainly do expect to see more growth worldwide in the…