IE losing share, Firefox stagnant, Chrome passes 13 percent

By Emil Protalinski, TechSpot.com
Published: July 1, 2011, 5:41 PM EST

With IE9, Firefox 5, and Chrome 12 all out, the second browser war is only getting fiercer. Let's take a look at the market share numbers for last month.
Between May and June, Internet Explorer dropped 0.59 percentage points, a bit less than the previous month. Firefox, meanwhile, dipped 0.04 percentage points, less than it gained last month. Chrome increased 0.59 percentage points, making it last month's biggest winner. Safari was up 0.20 percentage points. Opera lost 0.14 percentage points.
At 53.68 percent, Internet Explorer has once again hit a new low. IE9, the latest and greatest from Microsoft, last month captured 5.63 percent of the market (up by 1.44 percent percentage points). IE8 lost 1.21 percentage points, but it's still the world's most popular browser. IE7 fell 0.46 percentage points and IE6 fell just 0.18 percentage points. We're hoping that IE6 will fall below the 10 percent mark next month.
At 21.67 percent, Firefox is still below the peak it reached last year (24.72 percent). It appears that Firefox 4 and Firefox 5 are still not helping Mozilla regain overall market share. This is despite the fact that Firefox 4 last month captured a whopping 10.46 percent of the market (up by 0.38 percentage points) and Firefox 5 grabbed 2.05 percent (the latest version came out towards the end of June). Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 3.5 together lost 2.34 percentage points.
At 13.11 percent, Chrome has hit a new high. The browser's built-in updating system is working wonders for Google. Chrome 12 managed to capture 7.32 percent (up by 7.32 percentage points). Chrome 11 meanwhile fell 3.93 percentage points and Chrome 10 fell 0.58 percentage points.
The data is courtesy of Net Applications, which looks at 160 million visitors per month. As you can see above, the situation at TechSpot is slightly different: Firefox is first, IE is second, Chrome is third, Safari is fourth, and Opera is fifth. The only browsers to gain share at TechSpot between May and June were Chrome and Safari.