Microsoft’s share of the global browser market fell 0.92 percent in September in comparison with the prior month. What’s more, Internet Explorer’s market share has declined 7.5 percentage points since the same time last year, according to the latest data from Net Applications.
On the other hand, 22.1 percent of all Windows 7 machines accessing the Internet worldwide were running Microsoft’s latest IE9 browser at the end of September, the web metrics firm said Saturday. The other top browsers running on Windows 7 machines were IE8 (31.6 percent), Firefox 6 (13.7 percent), Chrome 13 (13.1 percent) and Chrome 14 (5.9 percent).
Microsoft specifically designed IE9 to take advantage of the advanced graphics capabilities of the latest desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks and media tablets running Windows 7. As a result, IE9 on Windows 7 machines accounted for a 31 percent market share of the browser market in the United States last month.
“Microsoft has been pushing IE9 and Windows 7 as the best browsing experience on Windows 7 because of IE9’s use of hardware acceleration and its integration with the Windows 7 user interface,” said Net Applications, which is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Leveraging Windows 7 Machines
Given that most people never change the browser that ships with their new machines, IE9’s market share will inevitably continue to rise as more people upgrade to new hardware. According to Net Applications, machines running Windows 7 accounted for 30.4 percent of all browser users worldwide at the end of September.
However, IE9’s emphasis on advanced hardware characteristics made it impossible for Microsoft to offer IE9 support on older machines running Windows XP, which was introduced in August 2001. Microsoft reports that IE6 still held a 9 percent share of the global browser market in September.
In China, for example, IE6 held a 28.7 percent market…
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