Tuesday 4th January 2011

Internet Explorer loses crown in major market for first time

Boston, USA and Dublin, Ireland; Tuesday 4th January, 2011: Firefox overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to become the number one browser in Europe in December 2010 according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that in December, Firefox took 38.11% of European market share, compared to IE's 37.52%.

"This is the first time that IE has been dethroned from the number one spot in a major territory," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "This appears to be happening because Google's Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share."

Google Chrome in third place is gaining market share in Europe and has grown to 14.58% compared to 5.06% in December last year. "We are probably seeing the impact of the agreement between European Commission competition authorities and Microsoft, to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March last," added Aodhan Cullen.

In North America IE still retains a clear lead in the browser market with 48.92% followed by Firefox (26.7%), Chrome (12.82%) and Safari (10.16%).

StatCounter Global Stats is based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4.9 billion from North America) collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, publishes browser stats via StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool. It also monitors internet market share battles including Search Engines, Social Media and Operating Systems including mobile.

Ends

Press queries to: Kerri Crowley, Simpson Financial & Technology PR
T: +353 1 260 5300 or E: kerri@simpsonftpr.ie

For individual country analysis go to:
https://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200912-201012

Further information on our analysis is available at:
https://gs.statcounter.com/faq

About StatCounter

StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit http://statcounter.com.