Over 300 Million Users Dumped Microsft’s Browsers This Year

Despite Microsoft’s best spin that the Edge browser is the best, people around the world are not convinced; in fact around 40 million of those people have dumped the Edge browser or Internet Explorer for other options.

Leading internet browsers

This stats was released by the renowned stats and analytics vendor Net Applications.

40 million is a nice pile of users however you look at it. I guess only an app backed by the resources of a company like Microsoft can lose so many users and still survive as an option to users.

This latest figure represent the number of people dumping Microsoft’s browsers for the month of October only. More alarmingly for a Microsoft is that this has being a consistent pattern since the beginning of the year.

To put it in context, in December last year, over 800 people were using either Edge or Internet Explorer to surf the Internet. That was a record high for the company.

Chart showing the alarming stats against Microsoft’s browsers

But almost a year later, the number has dwindled to just over 500 Million users. That is whooping 300 million users. That is just about the number of people using Twitter around the World.

Another alarming fact about the stats is the steady decline of users over the previous 10 months. The decline is so constantly and steady that one could draw almost a perfectly straight declining slope across the the top of the bar chart.

These numbers reflect only those using Windows PC. And for that reason Microsoft should be thankful because all Internet Explorer and Edge browser come bundles in all windows PC. And since almost all the PCs in the world are powered by Windows, it invariably means that there would be hundred of millions of Internet Explorer or Edge already installed in PCs.

So if 300 million people stopped using browsers from Microsoft, it invariably means that number would move elsewhere to get their internet fix. Basically other browsers should be gaining while Microsoft’s are losing.

Internet Explorer, on the way out?

For the month under review, Google’s Chrome is not the biggest gainer. Instead it is Firefox.

The figures show that Firefox got about 2% more users as against just 0.6% increase for Chrome’s users. This takes the market share of Firefox to about 11% while Google’s Chrome is still he dominant browser with about 55% market share.

Microsoft’s browsers still occupy a point between Firefox and Chrome at about 28%.

So what does these figures tell us about the 3 dominant browsers in the world?

Firstly, it is likely that as more and more people are getting more knowledge about how browsers work, the tendency to try better options is on the rise.

The point being that, more and more people are becoming aware that they don’t have to use the default browsers of Windows PC. So they look for other alternatives to Internet Explorer and Edge. A simple Google search would always point them in the direction of either Chrome and Firefox as the best alternatives.

Windows 10; key to survival of Edge browser

And I can imagine somebody somewhere thinking that instead of trying another Google product, why not see Firefox has to offer. And what Firefox offers is a very good browser that has everything.

Secondly, Microsoft have to really up their game if they want their browsers to survive. Launching a PR campaigns about Edge being at better power optimizer in laptops is not just enough.

I am sure not many people opt for a particular browser because of the power saving features. That might be a good factor in smartphones where how long a battery lasts is a very important issue.

The fact still remains that Microsoft are still leveraging on their dominant Windows Operating System to push their browsers on users. In an alternate universe where Windows is not so dominant, I am willing to bet that Internet Explorer would have long become extinct. While Edge would not even see the light of day.



image credit: theverge.com; computerworld.com; windows10update.com