Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has lost market share for its seventh straight month.
New numbers released by Net Applications show IE dropping to 67.55 percent of the worldwide browser market. That’s 0.6 percent less than it had one month ago, and a full 7 percent less than it had in March of 2008.
Firefox, in the meantime, has steadily grown in the same time period. Mozilla’s browser now commands 21.53 percent of the market, up from 17.83 percent last March. And it’s not the only alternative product growing, either:
• Safari is now up to 8.29 percent, from 5.82 percent last March.
• Chrome is sitting at a modest 1.12 percent but showing monthly growth. (It didn’t have any users last March, as it hadn’t yet been released.)
• Opera has fluctuated around the 0.70 percent mark.
Microsoft, of course, is hoping IE 8 — which saw its first release candidate hit the Net last week — will help it regain some of its lost ground. While the browser is undoubtedly an improvement over its predecessor, I don’t see it offering anything that’ll convince other browser users to switch back.
