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Safari Sits Stable in Oct, IE Slips Down

Safari Sits Stable in Oct, IE Slips Down

by , 10:55 AM EST, November 3rd, 2008

Apple's Safari take of the Web browser market remained relatively stable in October, grabbing 6.65 percent, up only slightly from September's 6.37 percent. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, however, continued on its slow downward trend giving up share to Firefox, according to data from Market Share.

The Windows-only Internet Explorer went into October with 71.52 percent of the browser market, but slid down to 71.27 percent as it moved into November. Microsoft's browser has been steadily losing market share for months on end as users move to Firefox, Safari, and now to a small degree Google's Windows-only Chrome browser.

Firefox almost topped 20 percent of the browser market for the first time in October, ending the month with 19.97 percent. In comparison, Firefox ended August with a 19.75 percent market share, but dipped slightly in September to 19.46 percent.

Safari and Firefox have been on an upward swing for months as interest in both browsers continues to grow. Internet Explorer, however, has been losing market share to both for well over a year, which is likley an indication that many Windows users are hunting for alternatives to Microsoft's market dominating Web browser.

While the statistics are handy for getting snapshot overviews of a particular Web browser's popularity, looking at the numbers over time offers a better impression of overall popularity. In this case, the numbers seem to indicate a growing interest in Safari and Firefox at the expense of Internet Explorer.

Observer Comments

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Close Name:fartheststar Posts: 222 Joined: 04 Jan 2004
Subject: don't know about this math

From Sept to Oct:
Safari went up 0.28 percent.
IE went down 0.25 percent.
Firefox went up 0.51 percent.

How is Safari "stable" and IE is on a 'downward trend' based on these figures?

They're both pretty stable, and yes, month over month, Safari is going up and IE is going down, but Safari went up more than IE went down, since the article is stating that Safari is flat and IE is falling.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Funny

MacNN seems to be saying the opposite, that IE (Vista) is up and Mac is down. Somebody is clearly not using the same numbers.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/11/03/vista.up.mac.down.in.brow/

Close Name:lhallberg Posts: 13 Joined: 31 Jul 2003
Subject: Re: Funny

Guest, the MacNN article you sited is talking about Operating System presence on the web. This article is talking about Web Browser application presence.

The other article sites VISTA vs. MAC, not IE vs. FireFox, vs. Safari.

More Vista users could be browsing the web but not be using IE to do it. Get it?

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