StatCounter said on the first day of its release Firefox 4 scored higher worldwide than Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 which launched more than a week ago.

“Although IE 9 has undoubtedly been hampered by its lack of compatibility with Windows XP.” By yesterday IE 9 had taken just 0.87% of the worldwide market.

When data for all versions of each browser are calculated, Internet Explorer still leads the global market with 45 percent followed by Firefox with 30 percent and Chrome with 17 percent. In the U.S., IE (all versions combined) leads the market with 48 percent followed by Firefox 26 percent and Chrome 14 percent.

On a monthly basis, StatCounter figures show a steady decline in the IE global market share from 55% in February last year to 45% this year. In the same time frame Google’s Chrome has risen steadily from 7% worldwide to 17%.

StatCounter recently reported that Firefox overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to become the number one browser in Europe for the first time in December 2010.

The report found that globally Bing reached 4.37 percent in February ahead of Yahoo at 3.93 percent. Google continues to lead globally with 89.94 percent of the search engine market.

In the United States Yahoo (9.74%) still has its lead over Bing at 9.03 percent. Google’s share in the US is 79.63%. In July 2009 Microsoft announced an agreement that Bing would power the Yahoo search technology. This has been implemented in the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.

“It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google’s market share,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

“Although Google dipped below the 90% mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009 it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon.”

This was perhaps not a pretty victory, as it only occurred due to a loss on IE’s part.  IE’s market share in fact fell from 38.91 percent in November to 37.52 percent in December, according to StatCounter, while Firefox’s market share declined from 38.50 percent to 38.11 percent.

Still, Aodhan Cullen, the CEO StatCounter, highlighted the significance of the occasion by stating, "This is the first time that IE has been dethroned from the number one spot in a major territory."

Then Cullen explained, "This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share."

Meanwhile, in America, StatCounter asserts that Internet Explorer has a market share of 48.92 percent.  Then Firefox is supposed to have a market share of 26.7 percent, followed by Chrome with a share of 12.82 percent and Safari with a share of 10.16 percent.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Microsoft adds a few more employees to the IE9 team as a result of this data.

The graph below, which was constructed by Pingdom’s bloggers using data from StatCounter, pretty much speaks for itself.  The bars corresponding to the mobile market shares of "Yahoo," "Bing," and "Other" just peek above the x-axis, and would be almost impossible to discern if not for the orange-on-black color scheme.

A post on the Royal Pingdom blog concluded, "If Google firmly believes that mobile is the future (which is the opinion of CEO Eric Schmidt), they are making all the right moves."

Indeed, according to StatCounter’s records, "One year ago, [Google's] share of the mobile search market was 95.58%.  That’s significantly less than today’s 98.29%.  Who knows, in a few months, perhaps they will pass 99%.  At this point this actually seems plausible."

But it should also be interesting to see if the launch of the Windows 7 Phone mobile operating system is able to in any way affect Google’s dominance.  Bing is supposed to be the sole default search option, after all.

Microsoft – and maybe every other company trying to compete in this field – can hope, at least.

The company says for the week beginning June 21 Chrome surpassed Safari to claim third place in the U.S. browser market.

"This is quite a coup for Google as they have gone from zero to almost 10% of the US market in under two years," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

"There is a battle royal going on between Google and Apple in the internet browser space (Chrome v Safari) as well as in the mobile market (Android v iPhone)."

Chrome had 8.97 percent of the U.S. browser market, edging out Safari which had 8.88 percent. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still lead the U.S. browser market with 52 percent, followed by Firefox with 28.5 percent.

Globally Chrome has been well ahead of Safari for some time with 9.4% of the market compared to 4% for Safari. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has 53% of the global market followed by Firefox on 31%.
 

It is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which still rules the roost, however, in terms of browser market share on the desktop in the U.S. IE8 and IE7 have significant leads over all the competition, but IE6, while still having an edge over the rising Chrome, dropped to below 5% for the first time, according to StatCounter.

The analytics firm says usage of IE6 in the US and Europe has fell to that point – 4.7% (a year ago, it was at 11.5%).

"At these levels web developers now have valid justification not to support IE6 in the future," says StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, with the firm adding that a number of sites including YouTube are already understood to have withdrawn support for IE6.

"IE6 has been a bit of a pain for many web developers and designers who have often had to recode their site to get it to work. There are also security implications in its continued usage," addsCullen.

In other parts of the world, IE6 is still a more significant part of the picture. Cullen says that if your target market is Asia, you’re "not out of the woods." According to the firm, it still has 20.8% usage there. In that part of the world, IE8 has only just overtaken it. It’s also still pretty big in Africa.

For December 20, StatCounter has IE 7 at 21.2% market share, and Firefox 3.5 at 21.93%. Microsoft’s IE 8 is closing in though. Its share has been steadily increasing, presumably making up for most of the lost IE 7 share, and has approached 20.33%.

The top browsers are as follows:

1. Firefox 3.5
2. IE 7
3. IE 8
4. IE 6
5. Firefox 3.0
6. Other
7. Safari 4.0
8. Firefox 2.0
9. Opera 9.6

Last month Mozilla celebrated the fifth birthday of the Firefox browser. They said that in the first four days of launch, over a million people downloaded Firefox 1.0. Firefox is available in over 70 languages and offers over 7,000 add-ons.

Firefox 3.5 also had over a million downloads in its first day of launch, and Mozilla surpassed a billion downloads in late July. Firefox has come a long way in five years and has really given Microsoft a run for its money in the web browser space.
 

Related Articles:

> Mozilla Celebrates The Fifth Birthday Of Firefox

> 8 Firefox Add-Ons to Boost Productivity

> Firefox Nears 1 Billion Downloads

StatCounter reports that Bing’s share of the US search market fell by over one percentage point to 8.51% from 9.64% in August. In addition, Yahoo declined to 9.40% from 10.50%. That’s not a good sign for the two companies considering their big partnership that’s on the way.

"The trend has been downwards for Bing since mid August," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "The wheels haven’t fallen off but the underlying trend must be a little worrying for Microsoft."

Of course, where there is decline in Bing and Yahoo, there is an increase in Google market share. Google went up over two percentage points to 80.08% in September from 77.83% in August.

Bing didn’t only decline in the US according to StatCounter. The search engine also experienced a global decline in market share falling to 3.25% from 3.58%. Yahoo also fell to 4.37% from 4.84% globally. Google reached 90.54%.

"Data is based on an analysis of 4.6 billion search engine referring clicks (1.1 billion from the US) which were collected during the period September 2008 to September 2009 from the StatCounter network of over three million websites," the firm explains.

StatCounter first found that Bing had passed Yahoo on June 4th (by a margin of 15.64 percent to 10.32 percent).  That situation didn’t last through the next day, though, with Yahoo quickly reestablishing dominance.  Now, StatCounter believes Bing’s climbed back on top.

According to the latest data, Bing’s market share yesterday, July 9th, was 12.9 percent.  Yahoo, by comparison, cornered just 10.15 percent of the market.  This gives Bing a solid lead of 2.75 percent.

Which lands the Bing team in something of a no-lose situation.  If Bing can hang onto the lead, its launch will have to be officially labeled a success; it’s just supposed to gain share, not kill Google.  If Bing loses the lead, Microsoft’s still better off than it was with the Live brand, plus, well, there’s always next month.

A hat tip goes to Robin Wauters, and as always, we’ll keep an eye on how things proceed from here.

According to StatCounter, the combined versions of IE 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 controlled a market share of 67.01 percent way back in January.  And IE 8.0′s done well since then, increasing its contribution to the total from 1.07 percent to 15.40 percent, as the graph below shows.

However, the combined IE market share figure for July is still just 54.75 percent.  Use of IE 6.0 and IE 7.0 is in the process of falling off a cliff, down 10.55 percent and 22.56 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, Firefox 3.0 is doing well (with its market share increasing by 11.12 percent in the same period), and if the "Other (dotted)" category mostly represents Firefox 3.5, things are really looking up for Mozilla’s entry in the competition.

Anyway, a hat tip goes to Erick Schonfeld, and we’ll keep a close eye on whether Internet Explorer manages to maintain a market share of more than 50 percent throughout the rest of 2009.