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| Internet Explorer falls to under 60% of visits in Europe |
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| Internet Explorer’s loss of market share becomes more significant in Europe at the end of 2009. With news of a new major security flaw that affects all versions of Internet Explorer, the trend should not be reversed in the coming weeks. Its competitors are taking advantage of this situation to strengthen their positions, in particular Google Chrome. |
| Cross section: |
- Study carried out from the 1st to the 31st December 2009
- Cross section of 13,345 websites
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| Internet Explorer continues to experience a slow-down in Europe: Google Chrome, Safari and Mozilla/Firefox are taking advantage of this opportunity |
The graph below shows traffic distribution by browser; it is an estimation of the average distribution of visits which were recorded on websites in Europe in the months of June and December 2009. The traffic distribution for 23 different countries was estimated (for further information on this please read the Methodology).
Internet Explorer is in trouble with a 3-point loss over the past 6 months and fell to under 60%:
- In December 2009, on average 58.6% of visits to a website in a European country were made through Internet Explorer compared to 62.2% in June 2009 (a 3.6-point loss),
- Internet Explorer’s visit share has fallen by 6 points in less than a year (March 2009: 64.6%).
Whilst the challengers, Mozilla/Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome took advantage of the situation to gain ground:
- Google Chrome, in 4th place, exceeded 4% of visit shares with a gain of 2 points in 6 months: 4.1% in December 2009 compared to 2.3% in June 2009.
- Mozilla/Firefox, main competitor of Internet Explorer, attained 29.4% of traffic to a website in a European country in December 2009 (+1.1 points compared to June 2009).
- Safari, in 3rd place, gained almost 1 point and exceeded 5% of visit shares. It is interesting to note that the growth of Safari coincided with the growth of Google Chrome. Based on the same engine Webkit, would Google Chrome indirectly encourage the use of Safari?
However Opera’s share remained stable:
- On average 2.3% of visits to a European website through Opera in December 2009 compared to 2.2% in June 2009.
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| Internet Explorer lost more ground in Ireland |
We are particularly interested in the decline of Internet Explorer in Europe.
The graphs below provide more information on the 4 European countries where Internet Explorer continued to lose more ground between June and December 2009 (in points of visit share). The graphs show an estimation of the average distribution of the top 5 browsers in visit shares for websites in each of these 4 countries.
Out of the 23 countries that were studied, Internet Explorer experienced the largest decline in visit shares for websites in Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece and Czech Republic.
In Ireland, Internet Explorer’s visit share was below the European average with 56.9% of visits in December 2009 (-7.8 points compared to June 2009):
- Google Chrome remained in 3rd place behind Mozilla/Firefox : on average 10.5% of visits in December 2009, a gain of almost 5 points in 6 months,
- Safari, 4th, is also a winner with a share reaching 8.5% (+3.3 points in 6 months).
The same observation was also made in Greece, where Internet Explorer decreased by 6.5 points falling to 55.8% of visits:
- Mozilla/Firefox took advantage of the situation to gain 3.5 points in visit share between June and December 2009 and reached 35.6%,
- Google Chrome (3rd) and Safari (4th) experienced an upward trend with a gain of 1.9 and 1.1 points respectively.
In the United Kingdom, Internet Explorer’s visit share decreased by 7 points between June and December 2009. Its share remained above the European average:
- In December 2009, on average 68.2% of visits in the United Kingdom were made through Internet Explorer compared to 75.2% in June 2009,
- Mozilla/Firefox, in second place, continued to grow but Safari (+2.2 points with 7.2% of traffic) and Google Chrome in particular (+2.6 points with 5% of traffic) enjoyed the highest increase.
In the Czech Republic, Internet Explorer’s visit share remained below the European average with 50.7% of visits in December 2009 (-6.3 points compared to June 2009):
- Good performance for Mozilla/Firefox with a share reaching 35.2% in December 2009 (compared to 32.3% in June),
- Just like Google Chrome whose share doubled (4% in December compared to 1.8% in June 2009),
- Opera, 3rd browser in terms of traffic, is also a winner with a gain of 1.2 points in 6 months (5.9% in December compared to 4.7% in June 2009).
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The slump of Internet Explorer has been confirmed in Europe for several months. Its version 8 released in March 2009 was unable to recreate a dynamic and its competitors took advantage of this.
Between June and December 2009, Mozilla/Firefox and Safari strengthened their 2nd and 3rd positions with 29.4% and 5.1%, respectively, of visits on average for websites in a European country.
But the winner of this semester is Google Chrome, which increased by almost 2 points in visit share from 2.3% of traffic in June to 4.1% in December 2009.
This trend should not be reversed following the news of a new major security flaw that affects all versions of Internet Explorer. The Centre d’Expertise gouvernemental de Réponse et de Traitement des Attaques informatiques (government’s center of expertise for the response and processing of computer attacks) recommended the use of alternative browsers until a corrected version was available from Microsoft.
Stay tuned as AT Internet Institute will provide a new study soon, analyzing the impact of this news on the browser’s visit share in Europe.
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Methodology:
We are interested in the average distribution of visits, by browser, which have been recorded by a certain cross-section of websites (except mobile websites).
In order to establish the cross-section of websites to be used as part of a study, a website is only used if the selection criteria, which have been established previously, are respected. These criteria are very strict and their aim is to remove any websites which have an anecdotal audience, or a chaotic audience, or whose collected data suspects a dysfunction in the measure.
For each country, only websites whose traffic has been mainly generated within the country itself are considered. In addition to this, only visits to these websites which have been generated within the country itself are considered. We calculate average traffic distribution per website. For every website, the visit share for each browser corresponds to the total number of visits of the analyzed browser compared to the overall number of visits for all browsers combined over a given period.
The European indicator is representative of the countries audited. The average visit share in Europe corresponds to the average of the indicators for the 23 countries studied. To evaluate the average, all countries are regarded as being equal in the value of their parameters.
The 23 countries included in the study were:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
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