Microsoft's IE Loses 8.17% of the Browser Market

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 06, 2006 -
Microsoft's IE Loses 8.17% of the Browser Market

Park City, UT – Janco Associates, Inc. has just released its mid year 2006 Browser Market Share White Paper.  The major findings for the last 12 months include that Microsoft continues to lose browser market share while Firefox has maintained its number 2 browser position and has added 2.82% to its market share.

The white paper also reports that Netscape version 8 has not taken off as well as expected and has only 4.98% of the browser market. Currently over 97.52% of the browser activity is limited to four browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, and AOL.

A summary of Janco’s browser market share data can be found on the web at both http://www.e-janco.com/browser.htm and the IT Productivity Center (ITPC) web site (http://www.itproductivity.org/browser.htm).

The top four browser market share rankings are: 1 - Microsoft’s IE – 75.88; 2 - Firefox – 13.71%; 3 – Netscape - 4.98%; and 4 - AOL – 2.95%.  The CEO of Janco Associates, Inc., M. Victor Janulaitis said: “Firefox took off quickly in early 2005 but slowed with the identification of a number of security issues.  In the last few quarters Firefox has not found any new traction.”  He added, “Netscape’s release of version 8 seems to have landed like a lead balloon.  The marketing of that product has been ineffective.  In our opinion it is not clear that Netscape will be a player in the browser market next year at this time.  This is especially true with the turmoil at AOL - Netscape's parent.”

Janco has collected consistent data on browser activity since September 1997.  The data is collected from commercial sites with a focus on business to business activity.