Bad week for Microsoft. Browsers, OS and Boxes

The first of every month (like hourly stats? click here) brings Market Share NetApplication data which kinda/sorta gives us an idea of how different platforms and browsers are doing against one another. I say kinda because the data is based on visits to a group of websites, not any other sort of hard data.

Now that isn't some guy checking his blog's Google Analytics stats. It is a group of large websites that see 160 million viewers a month. Significant but not the be all and end all. The true value is in watching trends month over month.

This month was a bad one for Microsoft.

First, in the browser arena, Internet Explorer, which has been the dominant browser since 2004 when NetApplications started tracking data (over 91% in Q4 2004) is now set to go below the 70% of the market share. Who is taking up these viewers? By and large, it is Firefox who has just surpassed 20% marketshare for the first time. In 2004, it had 3.6%. Apple's Safari (6.8%) and newcomer Google Chrome (<1%) have been taking some marketshare recently as well but most IE defectos are heading to Firefox.

Why the shift? Perhaps the surge in Linux based netbooks over the past few years has helped. Netbooks with Linux can't run IE and are almost always shipped with Firefox. Also, Apple's OS marketshare (IE no longer ships for Mac) is hurting...which brings us to...

Microsoft is also losing marketshare in the OS market. NetApplications says that Windows in all varieties has dipped below 90% of the market for the first time since the 1990s. While having 89% of the OS market would keep most people happy, the steady decline has to have some in Redmond sweating.

The problem? Again Macintosh on the high end and Linux based netbooks on the low end are chomping away at the big lead the Windows has. Also, as a mobile platform Apple's iPhone has been rising dramatically, though only at .37% currently.

Oh, and there is that thing called Vista.

Speaking of Vista, how would you like to be a PC vendor (HP? Dell?) and hear that people are buying used machines because they need XP and there are no new machines with available? That has to hurt.

Ouch.