After Microsoft inadvertently started a Twitter "fight" due to an erroneous claim regarding a feature in its Edge browser, the company may be facing some more disappointing news today. According to the latest report by NetMarketShare, the market share for Microsoft Edge browser has increased very slightly, while Internet Explorer has suffered a 55% year-over-year (YoY) decline.
NetMarketShare's report for December 2016 indicates that Microsoft Edge is now being utilized by 5.33% of all users. And while this is a slight increase compared to the 5.21% reported in November 2016, it's still within the reasonable margin for error. That said, it's still a 190% YoY increase from the 2.79% in the same month in 2015.
Meanwhile, Internet Explorer's market share has suffered a YoY decline of 55%. From 46.32% in December 2015 and 21.66% in November 2016, it has drastically decreased to 20.84% now. A couple of months ago, it was also reported that Edge and Internet Explorer may have lost as many as 40 million users, which may have attributed to the browser's plummeting market share.
In contrast, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox - which were the alternative browsers that people turned to, after ditching Edge and Internet Explorer according to the aforementioned report - increased their respective market shares. They are now at 56.43% and 12.22% respectively.
Meanwhile, Opera remained relatively steady at 1.33%, and Safari showed a slight decline of 0.14%. The "other" category shrunk to 1.70% compared to the 1.78% indicated in the prior month.
While Microsoft still holds almost 25% of the market share for browser, the report does hold some worrying aspects for the company. Even though it has updated its Edge browser on Windows 10 with new features such as support for extensions, and Google's Brotli compression algorithm, it is still facing stiff competition from Chrome.
Source: NetMarketShare | Image via LesEchos
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