Internet Explorer Loses Share in European Markets

Microsoft's delivery of a browser choice screen to European PC users this month is already beginning to have an effect on the software giant's market share within the European Union. For example, the latest statistics from StatCounter suggest that the new browser ballot is driving Internet Explorer share declines in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and elsewhere.

Mozilla's Firefox browser appears to be the major beneficiary of Microsoft's declines in France, where IE has lost 2.4 percentage points of market share since February 9. Firefox also has received small market-share bumps in Italy and the U.K.

"Early data suggests 50,000 to 100,000 new users chose Firefox as a direct result of seeing the ballot choice screen," said Mozilla spokesperson Erica Jostedt. "We expect these numbers will increase as the ballot choice rolls out in additional countries and will share updated metrics as they become available."

A Steady Global Share

Opera Software said it has been experiencing a dramatic uptake on downloads of its new Opera 10.50 browser, with the increase more than doubling from normal download numbers. "The greatest gains are in countries like Poland, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands and Portugal," said Opera spokesperson Falguni Bhuta.

StatCounter's latest data also shows that browser users in France and Italy are beginning to turn to Chrome, Opera and Safari. For example, IE's market share in Italy slipped by 1.25 percentage points in the past month, even as Chrome's share rose 0.7 percent.

From a global perspective, however, the Dublin-based web-metrics firm reports that IE's market share has remained steady at about 54.5 percentage points over the past month. So Microsoft's browser losses in Europe are being offset by gains in other markets worldwide.

Microsoft previewed its forthcoming IE9 browser before MIX10 conference attendees in Las Vegas last week. The software giant clearly hopes that the release of its next-generation browser, which does not yet have a firm date, will help it maintain its dominance over the global browser market.

On the downside, IE9 will not be compatible with machines running Windows XP, which continues to be the world's most popular PC operating system. So the incompatibility will limit IE9's initial uptake when it eventually comes to market.

A Wise ROI Calculation

Given that most people never change the browser that comes with their machines, the majority of IE9 users in the long run will be people who get new hardware, noted Al Hilwa, program director of applications development software at IDC.

"For the small subset who actually upgrade a browser and who will specifically upgrade to IE9, they will largely be motivated by graphics performance considerations and will unlikely be the ones running Windows XP at this late stage and less so down the road," Hilwa said.

Supporting Windows XP would not yield the performance improvements that the newer Windows operating systems will deliver through IE9 because of XP's lack of support of Direct2D, Hilwa observed. "Thus the offering would not be so attractive in the first place without a significant chunk of what is new in IE9," he said.

Hilwa thinks Microsoft is making a fairly wise return-on-investment calculation in this instance. "It may be more important for the IE team to support the Macintosh in the long run and to invest their efforts in mobile browsers for the major smartphone platforms," he explained.

yahoo