WebProNews

Internet Explorer's days - or at least its days as king of the browser pile - may be numbered.  New statistics indicate that IE's market share has shrunk this year, and that its share is indeed now close to falling beneath the 50 percent mark.

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.