A return to dominance? This data gives IE 55% of browser market share

Internet Explorer. It’s a joke right? No one in their right minds would even consider using it right? Wrong, apparently.

If research from NetMarketShare is to be believed Microsoft’s oft-reviled browser actually accounts for around 55% of current global browser usage.

Chrome meanwhile is supposedly used by just 16.27% of people browsing the web from their desktops, while Firefox now accounts for 20.12% of the global browser market.

In fact, NetMarketShare actually has Chrome taking a bit of a dip in February, falling 1.21 percentage points from 17.48% in January. By its reckoning, that’s a 17 month low for the Google browser.

Regular Memeburn readers might be a little confused at this stage. After all, we’ve previously cited figures which put Chrome at the top of the browser pile by a significant distance.

The simple answer is that the data comes from two different sources with two different methods of calculating browser use. As The Next Web points out, NetMarketShare uses data captured from 160-million unique visitors each month. It monitors 40 000 websites every month for its clients.

The company whose stats we’ve previously cited, StatsCounter, looks at 15-billion page views. Given that NetMarketShare monitors actual unique users, its numbers would appear to be more accurate. Our sources tell us however that its stats have a heavy US bias and aren’t as accurate as they could be. It’s worth noting however that those 160-million users represent an incredibly small portion of the global online population.

Whichever is more accurate, we know which one, the Chrome advocates are more likely to believe. Taken together though, the two sets potentially reveal something else entirely: most people have Internet Explorer, but Chrome users visit a lot more sites.