Yesterday, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 finally came out of beta, but according to the latest data from StatCounter’s GlobalStats, users are not exactly in a rush to update their browsers to IE8 just yet. Even though IE8 had been in public beta testing for a year, its market share only rose from 1.39% on its launch day to 1.56% today.
In contrast, by the end of its beta testing period, Firefox 3 already had 7.8% market share, which then doubled to 18.9% over the next three days after the launch of the final version (though with the help of quite a bit of hype). Of course, Firefox users are probably a bit more willing to experiment with new browser versions than IE7 users. The numbers for IE8 could change very quickly if Microsoft decides to push it out as an update through the Windows Update service, but Microsoft has not announced whether it plans to do so anytime soon.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share
The fact that as of today almost 23% of all Internet surfers are still using IE6, however, leads us to believe that it will take a while before a larger number of IE7 and IE6 users will switch to IE8. While it’s a major update, IE8 does not include a lot of new ‘must-have’ features for most users who just use their browser to get around on the net, and who probably don’t care much about accelerators and web slices.
