Can Microsoft stop IE's market share slide?
The Web browser market has been undergoing tectonic shifts for the past six years, with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) dropping 10 percentage points in market share every two years while Mozilla's Firefox gains 10 percentage points every two years. These trends are called out by Mozilla's Asa Dotzler, and they suggest that as early as January 2013 we could see Firefox surpass IE in market share if the trend continues:
(Credit:
Asa Dotzler (Data from Net Applications))
A larger version of the chart can be found here.
Firefox's growth raises all sorts of questions about how proprietary software vendors can and should compete with open-source products in the future, but for now it creates a massive problem for Microsoft. If Microsoft loses its grip on the Web browser market, will this also injure its efforts to become relevant on the Web?
Dotzler notes that "browser releases aren't having any major impact on the macro trends," which could suggest that Microsoft won't be able to stem the tide rising against IE simply by churning out a better browser. Instead, it may need to turn to plan B.
There is a plan B, right?
I'm not so sure. Historically, Microsoft would have dealt with such a slide in market share by tying products together such that competition was crippled but its market share was protected. With intense scrutiny from Europe and a renewed threat of such from U.S. regulators, Microsoft's wiggle room doesn't allow much monopolistic wiggling.
Microsoft, in other words, may be stuck with good old-fashioned competition, which doesn't bode well for it, as the Net Applications data suggests.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Thanks for another great article Matt.
Though I hear what you're saying, MS did have a habit of screwing various software vendors by bundling software but the web has taken a serious bite in that strategy. Thankfully.
I'm an ardent Firefox supporter but of late I've largely been using Apple's Safari 4 Beta since I like the way it renders many sites with its antialiasing turned on. I haven't used IE for 7+ years. I was using "Mozilla" before it got branded as "Firefox".
Here's a good write up by Joel Spolsky which talks about underlying factors why MS' bundling strategy doesn't work anymore (indirectly anyway):
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
More to the point, Windows is where the action is when it comes to new app development.
Spolsky wrote that several years ago and it's even more relevant now in some ways but not in others. For example, back then he marginalized Apple whereas Apple today is on a different plateau both in terms of mindshare AND marketshare. And the various examples Spolsky gives of web applications not having certain UI features have all been solved.
Case in point, if you've never heard of the "Bespin" text editor (running in a browser) the Mozilla group is working on, check it out:
http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/bespin/
-M
IE 6 still holds 15-20% share but it's falling more than 10 points per year so we could see it under 10% share in less than a year. At some point, Web developers will be able to stop worrying about it and the Web will take a big leap forward.
- A
Maybe Microsoft is letting their share slide because, when you step back and think about it, what exactly has owning a majority of the browser market actually gotten them besides bragging rights and constant litigation from Governments looking for quick cash? What exactly would owning the majority in the browser market get Google, Firefox, or Apple? Hoping some browser will dominate just so you can having bragging rights is petty.
Inevitable human nature will kick in and no matter which browser is on top there will always be people hoping for it to fail simply out of spite. These browsers wars are pointless.
"...browsers that are all free"
For the clients, yeah. But there is significant cash spent by those trying to write content to be consumed by these free browsers. And, historically, IE has been the most expensive browser to make content for. I've not tested IE 8 yet. But I know there are web pages I can build will cost less then $10 to make and have them show the way I want in all the other major browser, but then cost $100 or more to find some work around or hack to get the same affect on the popular IE versions.
They have a nice feature set already they just lack speed and standards compliance(Standards compliance is something they are fixing as we speak)
Can Microsoft stop the slide? Absolutely they can. I think Microsoft has shown in recent years (thanks to anti-trust settlements) that they can make the necessary adjustments to stay afloat in certain areas.
- by Angmarr May 18, 2009 1:26 PM PDT
- UMMMM i cant believe that I didn't comment on this before ... But AM I SERIOUSLY THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THIS!?!?!
- Reply to this comment
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(16 Comments)http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=3
Take a look @ IE7 !!!! SOLID 47% (+-0.5%)
The only reason that its going down APRIL is because IE 8 has been sent by Windows update!
I LOVE FIREFOX and it will continue to grow, but sad to say IE is not going anywhere!
I cant honestly been the only one who sees this!?