While Google’s Chrome posted its 34th consecutive month of market share growth for August, the browser also posted its lowest growth rate since November 2008. Just a hiccup or a first sign that it will get tougher for Google to acquire market share from its rivals.
Google continued its phenomenal pace which added 1.03 points of market share to Chrome, which now stands at 23.16%, according to StatCounter. However, the percentage growth rate was just 4.65%, the lowest in 34 months and the lowest positive growth rate for the browser overall. The losses posted by IE and Firefox, 0.58 points and 0.46 points, respectively, also continued to closely match Google’s gains, which suggests that Chrome can attract both Firefox and IE users.
IE is now down to 41.89% and Firefox is at a 31-month low of 27.49%. Firefox market share peaked in November of 2009 at 32.21%. There was no indication that the rapid release process is slowing Firefox’ market share losses at this time as the browser surrenders about half a point of market share per month. At the current pace, it will be surpassed by Chrome in November of this year.
Microsoft continues to struggle and there is no sign that it will be able to halt or even revert its losses. A few days ago, we reported that IE had, for the first time in 13 years, fallen below 40% market share for the first time on a single day in August.
However, Microsoft largely ignores this trend and focuses on IE9 on Windows 7. The company quoted Net Applications and said that IE9 now holds almost 27.7% share on Windows 7 in the U.S. and 20.4% globally. Chrome is gaining market share at a similar pace and holds 18.3% of Windows 7 share globally, but only 12.7% in the U.S. Firefox is at 13.2% globally and 11.3% in the U.S.
Daniel Bailey in Business on September 01
No comments:
Post a Comment