Browser Wars: Slow Take Up of Internet Explorer 7
I’m just looking at the latest Browser stats for our website, and there is quite an interesting thing happening with the take up (or not) of Internet Explorer 7.
Back in January 2007, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) accounted for about 60% of our visitors browser “choice”, with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) a lowly 20%. Come April, that gap had halved, with both versions accounting for about 40% each. IE7 seemed to be enjoying a rapid take up, and whilst it is not my browser of choice (Firefox gets my vote), I was pleased that it appeared as though it wouldn’t be long before the buggy, non compliant, IE6 was going to be a minority choice and that IE7 would take it’s place as the dominant browser.
However, 5 months later, IE7 has not really extended its lead. The gap between them now stands at 5%, with IE7 only just starting to show further significant improvement.
I think the reason for this is that the people who were going to upgrade, i.e. the people who take an active interest in such stuff, have now done so. The remaining people, especially from our demographic, are most likely to upgrade with a new PC purchase, so I predict the growth of IE7 to continue to be slow.
I’ll keep a keen eye on this, as things like this fascinate my geeky little mind, and report back in a few months!
The other browsers seems to be fairly static, with Firefox users accounting for only for about 6% of our total visitors, which is a 1% increase on January 2007, and Opera and Safari users actually declining in usage.
From the eyes of a developer, we know that IE7 is not the perfect browser, but it is a massive improvement on its predecessor. I certainly hope that in the next few months IE6 continues to fade away so that more users are left with a relatively decent platform to browse with.
Comments
For a largish public site (250,000 visits a month) I’m involved with, the IE6/IE7 share of all visits has gone from
57% / 28% in Jan 2007 to
50% / 33% in Sep 2007
so the changeover does seem slow with less than 1% swapping each month. Firefox is currently on about 13%, up from 11.5%.
Safari sees 3% on the above site. On another site I run, Safari is about 6%. In web development, it’s the Safari use that is significant for me simply because support in web apps is poorer – for example textarea replacment editors.
The amount of users browsing our site with Safari is stagnant at about 1.5%, and has been all year.
And just when I thought IE7 was on the up again, the last 3 weeks have seen a 1% decline in the usage of IE7. I’m pleased though that another standards compliant browser, Firefox, has increased by 1% over that time. IE6 is solid again though and not moving.