Full On Design

Overall April was quite an eventful month for the OS and Browser wars. On the OS front, Windows 7 (Win7) release candidate was made available to the public, which has received quite a positive response. Microsoft also started advertising how cost effective windows machines are in their “I’m a PC” advertisement campaign.

Browser wise, webmaster have been encouraged by Google to inform their IE6 users about the alternative browser available and the disadvantages of IE6. The effect this has had on IE6 users is debatable, but overall IE6 is slowly disappearing.

Browser Statistics

Biggest Rise: IE8 (+2.13%)

Biggest Fall: IE7 (-1.86%), closely followed by IE6 (-1.22%). IE7 and IE6 large drop in market share is mostly due to IE8 being released (so users are upgrading or switching).

Next month I expect IE8’s market share to increase as more IE7 users should start upgrading. IE6 should continue decreasing as a constant rate.

OS Statistics

Biggest Rise: Vista (+0.54%)
Biggest Fall: WinXP (-0.77%), lots of WinXP users are converting to Vista, Win7, Linux and Mac. However, WinXP is still a market leader.

Apple have recently started another “Windows Sucks” campaign, which criticizes Windows poor security which will affect the growth of Vista and WinXP. I’m expecting a 0.4% increase in Mac’s on the market as a direct affect of this campaign.

Linux may be the underdog next month however; as recent user generated advertisement (the best kind of advertisement) has been very positive, mostly putting empathises on Linux’s Security and Performance. I expect a 0.5% growth.

IE6 Death Date

Over the past few months I’ve been tracking the decline in IE6 market share. On average its current decrease is 0.9% a month, which works out about 0.02% a day. At its current rate, it should reach 0% market share on 13th October 2010 at around 9:36am.