Software giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is losing out its browser market share to rivals. A survey posted by research firm Net Applicatons on Saturday showed that Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer, is losing ground as the dominating web browser, while rivals are gaining ahead.
In December 2008, Internet Explorer held 68.15% of the browser market share, while in the comparable year-ago period IE led the market with 78.58% share.
Next to Internet Explorer is Firefox with 21.34% market share, which has grown significantly from 14.95% in December 2007.
Coming after Firefox are Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) Safari with 7.93%, Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Chrome with 1.04%, Opera with 0.71%, and Netscape with 0.57%. In December 2007, Safari held 4.85%, Netscape held 0.75%, and Opera held 0.52% of the browser market share.
Internet Explorer has dominated the browser market ever since Microsoft began aggressively promoting the application, subsequently crushing out the then dominant browser Netscape Navigator. In September 2008, Google introduced Chrome to partake in the browser application business, a very lucid segment due to a steadily climbing customer base.
An increasing number of users are switching over to Apple's Mac computers, which uses the Safari browser. Internet Explorer is also facing high competition from the growing popularity of the open-source Firefox browser offered by the Mozilla Foundation.
MSFT is currently down 9 cents at $20.24.
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