Internet Explorer Loses Share; Mac OS Gains

Market analysis firm Net Applications tries to take a look at what browsers and operating systems are in use on the Internet…and it’s most recent updates shows Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser continues to lose ground to Firefox and Apple’s Safari, while Apple’s Mac OS X operating system now accounts for nearly 10 percent of the market.

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounted for a 67.6 percent share of the browser market in January 2009—still by far the market leader, but still a 0.6 percent loss compared to December of 2008, and the lowest percentage since Net Applications began tracking browser data in 2005. During the last year Internet Explorer has lost about 8 percent of its market share. Still, the 0.6 percent drop in January represents something of a better performance for IE: it lost 1.5 percent in November 2008, and 1.6 percent in December.

In contrast, Firefox increased its market share by 0.19 percent during the month, to end with a total of 21.5 percent of the browser market—a new record. And Apple’s Safari Web browser boosted its share by 0.36 percentage points to 8.3 percent, also a new all-time high. For the last three months, Safari has seen its share increase faster than that for Firefox. Google’s Chrome browser accounted for 1.1 percent of the market.

Net Applications has also released its January 2009 figures for operating system usage, and while Windows is (of course) still the top dog with an 88.26 percent share, Apple’s Mac OS operating system is approaching a 10 percent market share with 9.93 percent of the market. (Another 0.48 percent of the market is iPhones…which run a version of Mac OS X). Linux accounted for 0.83 percent of the operating systems market.

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