Technology and innovation go hand in hand. And no scenario can portray it better than different web browsers fighting against each other for a significant market share. The top 3 players?Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome?are all playing differently to win the browser war. Each wants to eat up the industry share before the other?be it through new features, better versions, strategic partnerships or being user friendly.
The worst hit by competition is Internet Explorer, which is now playing it right with the new IE 9 version and attractive features. A quick fact file: The Indian market share of Internet Explorer today stands at 70% which has gone down significantly over the past two years.
Looking at the global picture, presently Internet Explorer dominates the browser market with 60.4% market share at the end of August, according to NetApplications data. Second is Firefox with 22.93% and third is Chrome with 7.52%. In the last two years, IE browser has lost more market share than most of its competitors could even dream of gaining. In September 2008, IE held 74.18% market share. At the end of
August this year, it was down to 60.4%. The gap between Firefox and Google Chrome is 22.9% and 7.5% which is clearly large. But, of the two browsers it is clearly Chrome which is in form while Firefox is actually losing ground at the moment.
In September 2008, Firefox had 19.6% market share and Chrome had 1%. In November 2009, Firefox peaked at 24.7% share and since then has lost ground to end in August at 22.9%. Chrome, on the other hand, continues its upward climb. It hit 2% in April 2009, 3% in August 2009 and now sits at close to 8% market share.
Clearly all the three are concentrating on modernisation to derive a larger market share in the market. For instance, Internet Explorer 9, the latest Microsoft browser, was released last month. Having now moved a long way from its IE6 browser to the significantly more standards-compliant IE9, Internet Explorer could well stabilise its position in the market.
The new Internet Explorer version has many features which did not exist previously. Apart from providing higher speed, IE 9 has tied up with partners like Rediff, Zapak, Facebook, Amazon amongst 70 global partners to make web browsing more user friendly. ?We believe in using the power of the PC to enhance the power of the browser,? says Pankaj Ukey, director, Windows Client, Consumer and Online, Microsoft India. Ukey shares that today?s internet user spends 80% of his time on the web browser searching for news or entertainment and more than 50% of his surfing time on social networking sites. This is primarily on the reasons for Microsoft to initiate partnership with these websites.
On their association with IE9, Deepak Abbot, vice-president?Zapak.com, Zapak Digital Entertainment comments: ?With the beta availability of IE9, Zapak will take on a new smooth and sleek avatar. With HTML5 for gaming, Zapak.com can now deliver a whole new and rich user experience to consumers. Zapak. com can now be directly installed on consumer PCs just like any standard Windows application; hence making it quick and easy for our users. What?s more, with IE9, consumers will be able to personalise their Zapak.com webpage and share games with their friends on social networks such as Windows Live. We are very excited about the IE9 beta launch and are happy to be one of Microsoft India?s first partners to bring consumers a redefined online gaming experience.?
Other such examples are Facebook, which engages approximately 500 million people. With IE9, Facebook users will be able to more quickly access and manage their social activities through the browser and get back to their friends via a seamless and rich experience. Simultaneously, Amazon.com seeks to be Earth?s most customer-centric company. By integrating new features enabled by Internet Explorer 9, Amazon continues to enhance the online shopping experience for customers by giving them easy access to Amazon.com favourites such as Gold Box Deals and Best Sellers as well as enabling customers to manage their accounts and check the status of orders quickly and effortlessly.
Rahul Kulkarni, product manager Google India captures the market picture aptly. ?All browsers have come a long way in the last two years and the Web has become much more fun and useful. It has been very exciting for us to see lots of great progress across web browsers. When we launched Chrome two years ago, we wanted to rethink the browser, building a modern platform for webpages and applications and to help spur innovation in the industry, to push browsers to innovate, and to improve the capabilities of the Web as a platform and we are already seeing those efforts paying off nicely.?
Talking about the Indian users, Kulkarni notes that the user response for Chrome has been fantastic all across the globe and Indians users are no different. In fact, India has seen the fastest adoption for Chrome across the globe and Google continues to maintain the momentum. One of the biggest reasons for this adoption has been the speed, of Chrome, with low speed internet connections Indian users were really able to appreciate and enjoy the difference and simplicity of Chrome. ?Indians are also actively using the variety of Chrome extensions to customise their browsing experience which is very heartening,? he stresses.
Nitin Khanapurkar, executive-director, advisory services, KPMG concludes, ?Innovation is critical for the browser industry as the awareness amongst consumers is increasing. Two years back, non technicians never thought of using different browsers apart from the traditional ones. But, today the dynamics is changing and web browsers are out to be more consumer friendly.?