Is Internet Explorer dropping into oblivion in 2011/12?

It looks as if Firefox, Opera, Safari and all the other high profile browsers are really hurting Internet Explorer, badly. Microsoft lost a 1.4 percentage point of usage shares in December, which is the biggest one month decline in more than two years.

Chrome seems to be hitting Internet Explorer hard with a 10% milestone nine months ahead of a schedule set by the company themselves in 2009. Internet Explorers total share has dropped to 57.1%, a record low for Microsoft. It has lost 5.6 percent points in the last 12 months and 10.7 points since V8 was released in March 2009.

Other companies are reaping the rewards, with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari rising 10% and 5.9% respectively, breaking their own records.

Statisically, IE seems to drop points in December, when users are browsing from home, and they have more control over the software they want to use, rather at work, when IT security happy employees ‘lock down' systems to stop office workers installing their own software. As we all know, Internet Explorer is preinstalled on Windows so it is the default option for any user.

The combined shares of IE6 and IE7 has dropped by a whopping 40 percent. It isn't all bad news for MS however as IE9 preview has been downloaded over 20 million times since the September 2010 release.

The enthusiast favourite Firefox gained some share, finishing at 22.8%. Opera was hovering around 2.2% overall, which isn't a bad result. Two of our favourite browsers by some margin.

Net Applications calculates these figures from over 160 million unique visitors who browse over 40,000 sites which they monitor. You can check it out for yourself over here.

KitGuru says: Which browser do you use the most?

Become a Patron!