The browser war continues into the middle of 2013. May saw the second full month of IE10 availability on Windows 7, as well as the release of Firefox 21 and Chrome 27. The latest market share numbers from Net Applications show only Chrome lost share last month.

Between April and May, Internet Explorer gained 0.18 percentage points (from 55.81 percent to 55.99 percent), Firefox gained 0.33 percentage points (from 20.30 percent to 20.63 percent), and Chrome slipped 0.61 percentage points (from 16.35 percent to 15.74 percent). Safari meanwhile gained 0.08 percentage points to 5.46 percent and Opera grabbed 0.04 percentage points to 1.77 percent.

At 55.99 percent, Internet Explorer’s growth seems to be slowing. January was the first time the browser went back above the 55 percent mark, while the next few months have shown it won’t be losing that crown anytime soon.

At 9.26 percent in May, IE10 has gained more market share (3.24 percent) in the second month of availability on Windows 7 than in the first. As a result, IE9 has lost a solid 2.78 percentage points (its biggest loss ever), falling to 15.39 percent.

IE8 meanwhile dipped 0.09 percentage points, but it’s still the world’s most popular browser at 22.99 percent. The real tragedy here is that this won’t be changing anytime soon: IE10 is mainly stealing share from IE9 on Windows 7, since Windows XP users can’t upgrade past IE8.

IE7 was down 0.03 percentage points to 1.78 percent and IE6 fell 0.19 percentage points to 6.03 percent. Everyone can’t wait for it to fall below the 5 percent mark, but that won’t happen till sometime later this year (and China is delaying things). Thankfully, IE10 has now passed them both.

At 20.63 percent, Firefox appears to be finally moving above its stable one-fifth-of-the-market mark. Firefox 21 was not available for a full month, so it only managed to grab 4.66 percent share as Firefox 20 made some minor gains to 10.38 percent. All other versions were down: Firefox 19 fell 4.35 points, Firefox 18 lost 0.10 points, Firefox 17 dipped 0.04 points.

At 15.74 percent, Chrome took yet another beating in May. We haven’t seen the browser below the 16 percent mark since August 2011. Nevertheless, Chrome 27 grabbed 3.66 percentage points in just a few days of availability. All other versions were down: Chrome 26 lost 3.37 points, Chrome 25 was down 0.60 points, Chrome 24 lost 0.07 points, and Chrome 23 dipped 0.05 points. At this rate, Chrome doesn’t look like it will be passing Firefox in 2013.

Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month. The service monitors some 40,000 Web sites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than page views.

Nevertheless, for May 2013, StatCounter listed Chrome as first with 41.38 percent market share, IE in second with 27.72 percent, Firefox in third with 19.76 percent, Safari with 7.96 percent, and Opera with 1.00 percent. The only part everyone agrees on is that Safari and Opera are not in the top three.

See also – Windows 8 now up to 4.27% market share, but not at Windows 7’s expense

Top Image Credit: Hugo Humberto Plácido da Silva

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