Analysis – Microsoft has rolled out IE9 with the precision of a Swiss clock. Two years after the release of IE8 and one year after the initial release of the first IE9 preview, IE9 was announced at SXSW and subsequently released for download. There is plenty of marketing activity, an armada of partnerships that surround the best Internet Explorer since IE4. Yet Microsoft is pounding a wall of old product sins that prevent IE9 from turning into an instant success. It has been and still will be a long process until IE9 can reach as many users as Microsoft is aiming for.
If we remember the Microsoft browsers of the past that lacked a true vision of the future of the web (IE5, IE6, IE7) and the trainwreck launch of IE8, which you surely missed if you did not diligently read you tech news every day, IE9 is a refreshingly different story. The enthusiasm – fair or not – is something I haven’t seen from the IE team since 1997 when IE4 was launched. The enthusiasm is justified, as IE9 is a very competitive browser on all levels and has even forced the trend of hardware acceleration on its rivals Firefox, Chrome and Opera. While Mozilla had a similar idea early on (first available in Firefox 3.7a5), and Chrome turned out to be the first final browser with hardware acceleration support, it is Microsoft that heavily pushed this trend and likely influenced an entire browser industry and enabled a new generation of web applications. Also, Microsoft has not only caught up in JavaScript speed, but has taken the lead in some disciplines. That is an impressive achievement, if we keep in mind that IE9 uses the general foundation of IE8, but appears to have received very effective updates.
Internet Explorer 9
There are several features in IE9 Microsoft has to be commended for and we can almost forget the disastrous IE8, which may be the most popular browser worldwide today, but has been – in combination with the tied down installed base of IE6 – largely responsible for Microsoft’s disastrous decline in browser market share over the past two years. IE8 was not a terrible browser when it was first shown as a beta in March 2007, but Microsoft did not react quickly enough to a changing landscape: A year from beta to final is an eternity in the browser environment, especially when you have new rivals such as Google entering the market.
The Failing of IE8
IE8 launched in March 2008 and hit a market share (all browser market share numbers quoted in this article refer to data pulled from Net Applications, if not stated otherwise) 27.13% within one year after launch. The most recent data, 24 months after launch points to 35.68%. The market penetration is much lower than what IE5, 6 and 7 reached in their product lifecycles. IE5 and IE6 hit more than 90% of browser share, while IE7 topped 85% at its peak, according to thecounter.com.
IE8 reached only about 36% despite the fact that it had virtually full access to all major OS platforms, including Windows, which is currently estimated to account for 89.7% of the global market and stood at 94.51% when IE8 was introduced. IE overall share is estimated to be 56.77%, which highlights an unhealthy fragmentation of the IE installed base as well as the fact that only 61% of Windows users are currently using IE as their browser. Historical data shows that the user share among windows users is declining at a fast pace: Two years ago, 73% of Windows users relied on IE as their web browser.
Of course, IE8 isn’t the sole problem. As IE7 was introduced, Microsoft was able to grow IE8 market share faster than IE7 dropped, but it was not able to consistently pick up all losses for IE6 in addition to that. In effect, IE8 was up against IE6 and IE7 upgrades, while Mozilla had become a much more attractive browser and Google was suddenly competing for browser market share as well. IE8 was a routine and forgettable product in its introduction as well as feature set – It was a solid upgrade, but there was nothing that made IE8 a standout product. Microsoft had created the perfect opportunity to be attacked on multiple fronts by its rivals. Mozilla did not waste to loot Microsoft’s installed base on an increasingly aggressive pace in the 2008 and 2009 time frame, while Google took its time to figure out how Microsoft was vulnerable.
Google’s attack began in mid-2009 when the company offered a first glimpse of Chrome 2 and a vastly accelerated JavaScript engine. In 2009, Google tripled its market share from 1.5 to 4.6%. In 2010, Google doubled its share and reached 9.98%. Just recently, Chrome became the third double-digit browser and now has more than half of the market share of Firefox, which seems to be a casualty of Chrome’s success as well, and is tangled up in a cut-throat market share battle with Microsoft.
Read on the next page: Concerns: Windows XP and China
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