Rising unemployment also bodes ill for IE, says Net Applications

(Computerworld) The market share of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer dropped under the 70% mark last month for the first time since Web metrics vendor Net Applications Inc. started keeping tabs on browsers, the company said today.

IE slipped to a 69.8% share, down from October's 71.3% and off 7.6 percentage points in the past year.

Rival browsers from Mozilla Corp., Apple Inc. and Google Inc., meanwhile, cashed in on IE's slide and posted gains for the month, according to Net Applications' data, which is culled from visitors to the thousands of Web sites the company monitors for clients.

Mozilla's Firefox, which briefly popped above the 20% share bar during October, solidified that surge in November to end the month at 20.8%, an increase of 0.8 percentage points, the largest one-month increase since March 2007.

Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome also gained in October, with Safari accounting for 7.1% of users -- up 0.6 percentage points -- while Google climbed just 0.1 points.

Vince Vizzaccarro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing, connected IE's slide -- and Firefox's and Safari's impressive increases -- to a pair of factors.


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