AfterTek

Mixed signals are being broadcasted regarding the market share of each browser with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) dropping its hold by over 2 percent, according to one market survey.

Mozilla’s Firefox continued its rise in popularity among Internet surfers with web traffic monitoring firm Net Applications saying that it has increased it share to 12.5 per cent. Meanwhile the firm reckons that IE’s share in the market is at 82.1 percent, its lowest in over two years. Apple’s Safari continues to be on the third spot increasing its share to 3.53 percent.

However if OneStat.com is to be believed that IE has infact increased its market share and is used by over 85.85 percent of Internet users, up by 2.8 percent. Firefox has lost the ground and is pegged at 11.49 per cent, less by 1.44 per cent. Safari too has seen a decrease in its usability by 0.2 percent claiming 1.61 per cent of the market share.

Both Microsoft and Mozilla are gearing up to release newer versions of their browsers. With Microsoft increasing the hype about IE 7, many analysts believe that this time, the company is making a serious attempt to address the browser issue.

Says James Governor, an analyst at Red Monk, “IE7 is a much better product again. It has some good new features; such as the way it works with RSS feeds, for example. Microsoft is taking the browser seriously again. They didn’t for a while.”

He added that the memory leak issue might turn out to be the Achilles heel of Firefox. “If you have a browser that has memory leaks all the time, it is very difficult to work with,” Governor said.