Mozilla will need to find an effective way to limit its market share losses as its decline is exceeding the pace of IE and is hitting a double-digit rate over a 6 month period.

StatCounter’s browser market share for the first half of the month indicate that IE may take a break in surrendering browser market share in September, while Chrome is still gaining, albeit at a slower rate than in previous months. Apple’s Safari is showing strong gains, but Mozilla’s Firefox is dropping in popularity much faster than we would have expected just a few month ago.

Browser market share data suggests that Microsoft will be able to lift IE market share by about 0.3 points to 41.96%,which would be IE’s first gain after 14 months of consecutive losses. Firefox could drop to 26.34% and lose more than 1 point. Chrome is on track to gain about 0.75 points to just under 24% market share. Safari will be approaching 6% market share by the end of the month, up from about 5.2% in August.

Firefox appears to be outpacing IE’s 6-month trending market share losses, which will enter a double-digit rate of about 12% in September. 6 months ago, Firefox held 29.98% market share. The 1 year trending loss will exceed 16% (down from 31.50%). Firefox 6 month/12 month trending losses have been accelerating since January of this year and have peaked in every consecutive month since then. Microsoft appears to have stabilized its losses in the 7% range for the 6 month trending rate and is reducing the 12-month trending losses to about 16% in September.

The current trend still puts Chrome on track to surpass Firefox market share in November, even if Chrome appears to have hit some roadblocks lately. However, Chrome has topped 25% market share on a single day this month for the first time (25.02% on September 11), while Mozilla dipped into the 25% range (25.68% on September 17) for the first time since May 2009.

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