Net Applications is reporting that Internet Explorer has crossed the 55% market share threshold in January for the first time since August 2011, continuing the rises the browser saw in the second half of 2012. Internet Explorer was up 0.37% to 55.14% for the month, but it wasn"t the only browser that saw a gain in market share according to Net Applications" data.
Firefox also rose, up 0.18% in January to 19.94% (from 19.82%), as did Opera which gained 0.04% to post a 12 month high of 1.75%; Safari was completely flat, losing no market share. Of course if most browsers posted a gain in market share, it has to come at the expense of one of them, and for January it was Chrome that took the hit: Google"s browser fell a whopping 0.56% (from 18.04% to 17.48%), pushing it further away from Firefox to stay in third spot.
Internet Explorer 8 still commands the title of the world"s most popular browser, with its market share of 23.54% coming in higher than all versions of Firefox combined. Internet Explorer 10 finally reached a market share above 1% having risen 0.33% to 1.29% in January, while Internet Explorer 9 market share dropped just like Windows 7. The latest versions of Chrome (24) and Firefox (18) are the most used versions of their browser types, with 8.70% and 8.28% usage respectively.
Net Applications gathers data based on 160 million unique visitors to around 40,000 websites, and data is weighted by country to give the most accurate results possible.
Source: Net Applications