Chicago (IL) – Both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as well as Mozilla’s Firefox browsers lost market share during September, a new report from Net Applications indicates. The combined drop is greater than the gain posted by Google’s Chrome web browser that was released on September 2.

The market share decline for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) continued in September despite sharp gains for the second beta of IE 8.0, which is now hovering around 0.5%. IE dropped 0.63 points to 71.52%, which is down 5.2% or 3.95 points this year so far. Firefox was also hit and checked in at 19.46%, down 0.22 points over August, but up 14.6% or 2.48 points for the year.

Apple’s Safari continued its runs and gained .28 points to 6.65% in September. Opera was also slightly up from 0.62% to 0.69% market share. Google’s Chrome averaged 0.78% share for the month, which is down sharply from more than 1% in the first week following the release of the browser.

Eagle-eyed readers may notice that the combined loss of IE and Firefox, 0.90 points, is actually greater than the gain of Chrome (0.78 points), which would mean that some IE/Firefox switched to Safari and/or Opera as well, both of which posted gains. But if we assume that the majority of Chrome users actually came from the IE and Firefox camps, then it appears that IE users were much more likely to switch than Firefox users, as the drop in absolute points was almost three times higher for IE than for Firefox.  

Apple’s Safari browser is not the fastest growing browser in the market (although its 2008 growth rate of 14.2% almost matches Firefox’ growth), but it shows the most consistent growth so far. Safari had only two month-over-month drops this year. Opera, Netscape as well other browsers showed virtually no changes in market share this year.   

safari and opera increase share becasue of cell phones.

Oct 01, 2008 21:17     

yea right, the increase is because of millions of iphones and other LG samsung smart phones... like on my iphone I can only use the crappy safari... can't use firefox or IE... it's not buy choice...
yo report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +6

Opera web browser it's the best

Oct 02, 2008 00:13     

I would really like that opera was the number one browser in the world.
everts garay report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Something really new

Oct 02, 2008 02:29     

Though Chrome add some increases in load-times of pages, what I would really like to see is something truely innovative on the browser market. It appears to me that the current browsers steal/copies functions from eachother rather than create new ones themselves, i.e. Chrome's homepage is the same as Opera's Speeddail page, IE's tab from FF so on and so forth. IMO to move market-shares on the browser market, it takes alot more than simply consolidating already exsisting browser functionality in one browser. /Steffen

Steffen report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

@something new

Oct 02, 2008 02:31     

[edit]Though Chrome add some increases... should have read - Though Chrome add some performance increases[/edit]
Steffen report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Opera ...

Oct 02, 2008 05:49     

Opera is the best .... try it .
Jus report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

I prefer SeaMonkey

Oct 02, 2008 08:21     

I prefer the SeaMonkey browser over IE or Firfox. IMO; it is the best browser. http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
TomLeeM/BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

more useless "web browser market share" info

Oct 02, 2008 09:12     

1) who cares 2) how in the world do they measure this 3) everyone i know uses at least 2, sometimes 3 browsers 4) what difference does this make at all 5) who cares
wingnut report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

FF 3.0 may be killing FF market shares

Oct 02, 2008 10:18     

When FF 3.0 first launched we ran into a lot of trouble with it. Though the problems seem to be largely resolved, it may have pushed some users away. Honestly FF should have stayed in beta until it was as stable as it is now. The average user want's a stable easy to use platform, not updates and problems.
hank report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

There are issues with google but right now it seems...

Oct 02, 2008 13:39     

There are issues with google but right now it seems to work the best. each browser that i have tryed seems to all work at the same speeds (except IE, slow as hell)but i like interface and the look of google i also like how it is not on an APPLE. and opera is notthe best not even close. ff is better and so is google.
MetzMan007 report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1