IE9 Will Have to Resort to Force to Gain Market Share James White April 29, 2011 This week, Google Chrome decided to join the ranks by releasing version 11 of their browser. This means that everyone is accounted for with this browser update season. Chrome launched with 0.35% and has reached 1.47% in a mere 2 days. Firefox 4 initial launch was at 1.95% and has risen to 8.58% since its launch. Internet Explorer 9 is not doing so well this season, starting its launch at 0.66% and it has only grown to a meager 3.05% as of today. While you could say the market share is higher than Chrome, you also have to take into account Chrome has been out for 3 days, while IE9 has been out since March 14th. Microsoft stated the reason for the slow adoption is because IE9 has only been available for manual download and not through Windows directly. My first problem with this statement is I have IE9 from a Windows 7 update, which is exactly what they mean by “Windows directly.” Then there is the issue that every other browser, with the exception of Safari, is manual download only. It is usually about a week before previous versions of browsers give their users a pop-up with the option to update. This is something Internet Explorer is fully capable of doing as well. Essentially, Microsoft has admitted the only way people will use their browsers is when they are forced to use it. Tom’s Hardware’s Douglas Perry believes the issue is IE9 does not support Windows XP and I completely disagree. I believe WinXP users are the reason IE6 and IE7 still have decent market share. Obviously WinXP users are not big on updating their software. Source: Tom’s Hardware Share This With The World!
