According to NetMarketShare, Chrome gained eight-tenths of a point in user share during November, putting the browser at 55.8%. Chrome’s torrid growth — in one year, its user share grew by 78% — has cooled over the past three months, averaging just six-tenths of a percentage point in that stretch. (The three months before that, Chrome gained an average of 2.8 points, or more than four times the more recent period.)
Google’s browser was again the biggest beneficiary of Microsoft’s plunge in browser relevance. The combined user share of IE and Edge ended November at 26.9%, a decline of 1.5 percentage points. The month’s drop was less dramatic than October’s near record, but it was the eighth in a row of 1.5 points or more.
Using Net Applications’ data for browser and operating system user share, as well as Microsoft’s claim that about 1.5 billion PCs run Windows worldwide, Computerworld calculated that IE lost approximately 23 million users last month. In the last 12 months, more than a third of a billion users have dumped IE.
If declines continue at the rate of the last 12 months, IE and Edge will fall below 25% this month, and under 20% by March 2017.
