A Great Start to 2012 for IE

Oh really? Surely what you meant to say was, as Neowin puts it, "IE usage drops to record low, could fall below 50% by March". By focussing only on IE9 on Windows 7, you completey ignore the fact that overall IE usage is on a clear downward trend, and has been for a long time. This makes your post seem like rather desperate whistling in the wind, and can I suggest, seriously, that you re-consider dropping these IE usage puff pieces. Just to be clear, IE9 is (imho) a great browser with many usefful features - just concentrate on those please!

And if you really want to reverse the downward trend, then consider changing your update model. IE is revised far too slowly (even now) than other browsers, and it makes MS seem like the old enterprise-oriented dinosaur of old.

Hey only IE10 marketshare and only on Windows 8 should matter, Windows 7 is obsolete and half a decade old, I first tried the pre-beta in 2008 and it's 2012 now. </sarcasm>

Chrome is lowest in US. Why is that..?

@dhanushkapg Chrome is higher outside the US because in Europe the EU forced the browser choice option on all Windows 7 machines.

@HuwJ: IE share is always going to drop, people these days like choice and trying different platforms. Until the IE team adopt a faster update cycle, Chrome & FF will gain more ground as people are tempted by shiny new features as those browsers come out with new versions. They are shackled by the corporate use of IE who rely on stability and don't like frequent updates. It's a problem MS has with many different areas, keeping their customers happy, making sure any changes don't break existing programs, backwards compatibility is great but it limits innovation.

It's good to see IE9 use overtaking the older versions of IE, it's about time. However, as FF & Chrome release improved versions I feel that the IE team could update IE9 (or even patch IE8/7) with faster Javascript engines (and allow CSS/HTML5 compatibility) to better compete and be up to date. That could be done without fully upgrading the browser to a new version; which would get around a lot of the problems with companies upgrading. Perhaps building in an option to select a rendering engine so people could choose the newer and faster version, but still have the older engines as an option for compatibility.

This is a ridiculous post. At the time Roger wrote this post, IE's market share has dropped to the record low 52%. I don't know what would Steve Balmer feel if he's got a chance to read your post.

There are two primary reasons behind IE's failure. First, Microsoft gave up its proprietory standards to adopt so called w3c standards. This gave IE competitors great advantage since their biggest headache - compatibility issue - is gone. With proprietory standards, non-IE browsers render web pages terribly. With w3c standards, all browsers work well as long as they support the standards. The browser become irrelevant when web pages are rendered well in all browsers. Microsoft throw away its advantages and deeply hurt web developers since their IE6 optimized websites fall down miserably under IE7 and above.

Second, Microsoft made the stupidest decision to not supprt Windows XP in IE9. This upset 25% (Windows XP world wide market share) PC users and make them switch to non-IE browsers if they demand the lastest web technology.

I don't think the version number game employed by Chrome and Firefox can play any significant role in attracting users. Two many versions will baffle users. But Microsoft should advertise IE's advantages over its competitors.

The fate of IE will depend on Windows 8. If Win8 is successful and HTML5 become the dominant web technology, IE may reverse its downward trend since people prefer system default browser like they use Safari on iOS, despite Safari is the worst browser out there, and IE9's current advantage in HTML5 performance.

@leonard2007 Uhm, getting rid of proprietary garb in favor of the standards everyone else uses is a good thing for developers. One page fits all, so to speak.

I would also like to say, IE is doomed if you don't pick up the update pace. Some sites STILL don't render stuff right in IE 9. Twitter search box, YouTube buttons, etc. I don't know why they don't, they just don't. I blame IE, since it works in Chrome/Firefox. MS you keep bragging about marketshare on here with IE 9 but the overall trend is obvious. Chrome is starting to eat everyones lunch and you guys need to get something figured out. :S

The only reason why IE usage is dropping is because XP users are going for newer browsers that still work on XP. However, the number of XP users are dropping, which means potentially that those users are going to go back to new versions of IE that work on Windows 7 and later, Windows 8. Which means that IE usage has the potential to actually go back up in the long run, because of users upgrading their operating systems to Windows 7. which IE9, the latest and greatest version of IE, is compatible with.

@ Ning Ning Sun, If users are happy with a non-IE browser on XP, they might not switch back to IE after migrating to Windows 7.

Microsoft's attitude here is an iron-clad guarantee that Internet Explorer will fail.  How can anyone possibly write a blog post like this and think they're being true?  By tieing the engine at a specific version as a selling point of Windows, they ensure that the browser will be constantly fragmenting the landscape.

All other browsers update themselves and their rendering engines.  While Microsoft insists that a verson of Internet Explorer can never improve until the next one.

Pure marketing folly.

IE9 still requires a bunch of exceptions in my javascript/html/css and makes the production of web applications more expensive.