Aston Game

The third quarter of 2013?s browser war is now over. September saw the sixth full month of IE10 availability on Windows 7, as well as the release of Firefox 24 and one full month of Chrome 29 availability. The latest market share numbers from Net Applications show Internet Explorer was the biggest winner last month.

Between August and September, IE gained 0.19 percentage points (from 57.60 percent to 57.79 percent), Firefox slipped 0.22 percentage points (from 18.80 percent to 18.58 percent), and Chrome dipped 0.02 percentage points (from 16.00 percent to 15.98 percent). Safari meanwhile gained 0.18 percentage points to 5.77 percent and Opera slipped 0.06 percentage points to 1.47 percent.

At 57.79 percent, Internet Explorer has hit a new high for the year. January was the first time the browser went back above the 55 percent mark, and while the next few months have shown it won�t be losing that crown anytime soon, it still has a long way to go before the 60 percent mark.

At 19.45 percent in September, IE10 has slowed its growth, although it has still managed to grab another 0.80 percent share. Meanwhile, IE9 has regained 0.43 percentage points, to 9.45 percent. Soon IE11 will be following in its predecessor�s footsteps, given that it will be available for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.

IE8 meanwhile slipped 0.26 percentage points, but it�s still the world�s most popular browser at 21.39 percent. The real tragedy here is that IE10 is mainly stealing share from IE9 on Windows 7, since Windows XP users can�t upgrade past IE8.

IE7 was down 0.17 percentage points to 1.37 percent and IE6 slipped a huge 1.22 percentage points to 4.86 percent. This means it has finally fallen below the 5 percent mark, which we weren�t expecting till sometime later this year.

At 18.58 percent, Firefox seems to be maintaining its new low. The last three months aside, the last time we saw the browser at 18 percent was way back in May 2008. Firefox 24 was just released, so it only managed to grab 2.17 percent share, while Firefox 23 hit 11.57 percent. All the other versions lost share: Firefox 22 fell 6.14 points, Firefox 21 lost 0.15 points, and Firefox 20 dipped 0.06 points.

At 15.98 percent, Chrome is close to its 21-month low in May. Chrome 29 grabbed 12.82 percentage points after being available for a full month. All other versions were down or flat: Chrome 28 lost 9.13 points, Chrome 27 slipped 0.21 points, while Chrome 26 and Chrome 25 lost a combined 0.03 points.

Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than page views.

Nevertheless, for September 2013, StatCounter listed Chrome as first with 40.80 percent market share, IE in second with 28.56 percent, Firefox in third with 18.36 percent, Safari with 8.52 percent, and Opera with 1.16 percent. The only part everyone agrees on is that Safari and Opera are not in the top three.

See also � Windows 8 now up to 8.02% market share but Windows 7 sees bigger gains for the first time

Top Image Credit: Hugo Humberto Pl�cido da Silva