Browsers usage competition: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari

Online, May 12, 2010 (Newswire.com) - The latest news reports show that internet users are growing on a daily basis with an average growth of 400% for the last 9 years. The growth reached more than 1500% in Africa and in the Middle East. The competition between different web browsers is emerging, and their leader Internet Explorer (until now) is loosing day after day his market share. What are the latest technology news and statistics news regarding the different web browsers in the market?

Ten years ago, web browsers competition was between two parties: Internet Explorer and Netscape. Internet Explorer won the fight as soon as they launched IE6 in 2001. Since then, Internet Explorer dominated more than 90% of the market share until recently.

We will explorer in this news brief the major web browsers used nowadays: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, and we will highlight on the web browsers competition.
Internet Explorer:

Windows internet explorer (commonly abbreviated to IE), is a series of web browsers developed by Microsoft and is included in Microsoft Windows operating systems since 1995. Internet Explorer is the most widely used web browser since 1999. It reached a peek of 95% of market share in 2003 with Internet Explorer version 6: IE6. The latest version of IE currently available is Internet Explorer 8. It is a free upgrade for Windows XP and above. Internet Explorer has also a web browser version for Mac (Internet Explorer for Mac), Unix (Internet Explorer for Unix) and for mobiles (Internet Explorer Mobile). Microsoft spent over $100 million a year on IE in the late 1990s, with over 1,000 people working on it by 1999.
Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox (commonly know as Firefox) is a free and open source web browser managed by Mozilla Corporation. Currently, Firefox is the second browser after Internet Explorer in terms of number of users. Firefox most powerful feature is the add-ons. Applications and plugins are developed by Firefox community giving internet surfers and for web developers more usability from their web browser Firefox.
Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a free web browser developed by Google. It was officially launched for public on December 2008. Chrome is the third widely used web browser after Internet Explorer and Firefox. Chrome released a part of its source code few month ago, which allowed developers to develop themes and plugins to be used by the web browser users.
Safari

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. Safari is now Apple's default browser starting from Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the web browser of iPhone. Safari was launched in January 2003. Today, Safari is competing with Google Chrome on the third place for the most widely used web browsers.

According to the web browser usage report (reference http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1 ), Internet Explorer usage decreased from 68% to 60% during the last 10 month but still dominating the first rank. On the other hand, Firefox and Chrome showed a remakable increase (Firefox from 22% to 24% and Chrome from 2% to 6%).

If we want to classify the web browsers, we can say that Internet Explorer is still number one with 59.95% of the market share, followed by Firefox by 24.59% share. At rank three we can find Chrome with an increase of 200% for the last 10 month to reach a market share of 6.73% and bypassing Safari who is currently at rank 4 with 4.72% of total users.

Will Internet Explorer popularity keep decreasing? Will Firefox soon be the number one web browser in the world? and with whom he will compete, with Internet Explorer or Chrome. And what is Safari's strategy to follow and compete on a higher rank?