Internet Explorer 8 Market Share Drops In Four Days

By: Kara Gilmour
Staff Writer
Published: Mar 24, 2009

Internet Explorer 8 was just released four days ago pledging to comply with Web standards, but the browser is already missing market share. Several IE8 users have downgraded to IE7 or gone back to Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari.

Microsoft Corp is weighing in on user reaction after releasing Internet Explorer 8 on March 20. The Web browser vowed to deliver new features not seen in Mozilla Corp's Firefox, Google Inc's Chrome, or Apple Inc's Safari. However, the publicity seems to be over in just four days.

Research firm Net Applications reported that IE8 held 2.59 percent of the market share after it's debuting. However, it faded quickly to 1.86 percent as of Monday morning. The report indicated a shift from IE8 back to IE7 suggesting users were downgrading for unknown reasons.

Internet Explorer 8 is having trouble rendering pages created with Microsoft Publisher.

However, some users complained that the new Web browser failed to render Web pages correctly. In fact, pages created using Microsoft's own publishing software, Microsoft Publisher, failed to render properly in the new browser. Other users reported their tabs went missing after upgrading from Internet Explorer 7 to Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 has so far shown similar signs of the Microsoft Vista woes, and that's not good. The early signs of users going back to IE7 only adds to the frustration on new products built by Microsoft. The Internet Explorer Web browser has been losing market share to competitors for the past 12 months.

Firefox has been taking market share away from IE since last year. This has some competitors concerned over their share of the Web browser market.

Firefox has been holding strong with more than 20 percent of the market share and is making competitors a bit concerned as it has shifted users away from IE. Even so, Internet Explorer is still the dominate player on the Web and is currently holding steady with approximately 67 percent of the market share. That is down from 75 percent since January 2009.

Apple claims that Safari is the fastest Internet Web browser to date. Recent benchmarks do show that Safari can render JavaScript faster than IE and Firefox.

Apple Safari is another one to watch as they claim it to be the fastest Web browser on the Internet. Current benchmarks indicate that Safari is faster at rendering JavaScript than Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome. Internet Explorer 7 actually renders pages and JavaScript faster than Internet Explorer 8.

IE8 users do feel that the Web browser is better, but not the best. This seems to give the indication that perhaps the market has finally moved to a more Web browser competitive atmosphere which Microsoft enjoyed for more than a decade. Part of that reason had to do with including Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system on every new computer.