As it turns out, Internet Explorer is good for other things besides downloading other browsers. As ComputerWorld recently pointed out, IE made market share gains for the first time in eight years. For testers, remember that when a developer insists that “no one uses IE”. Here is the story:
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) turned things around in 2012, posting an annual usage share gain for the first time in the last eight years, according to data published earlier this week by a Web analytics company.
Net Applications, which tracks browser usage by monitoring unique visitors to customers’ websites, said IE ended 2012 with a 54.8% share, up 2.9 percentage points from the start of the year.
The uptick was in stark contrast to nearly a decade of decline. In each of the years from 2005 through 2011, IE lost major chunks of usage share, with several of those years recording decreases of seven or more percentage points.
The years of contraction turned the once-dominant IE — in early 2005, it accounted for nearly 90% of all browsers by Net Applications’ count — into one of just three browsers that fight for users. Battling first with Mozilla’s Firefox, which celebrated its seventh anniversary last November, then with Google’s Chrome, a browser launched in September 2008, IE flirted with ceding its majority position in December 2010, when it hit a low of 51.9%, but edged back from the precipice.