Internet Explorer fends off Firefox, only to face new foe

Microsoft's Internet Explorer posted its first market share gain in six months, according to the latest data from NetMarketShare, halting a steady slide that had seen the browser lose nearly 4 percentage points since July 2010. The gain of 0.77 percent is IE's biggest increase in more than a year.

Firefox, meanwhile, was unable to capitalize on IE's faltering, closing the gap merely by staying pat or losing share less rapidly than IE. But now, Firefox has lost nearly 1 percentage point, and IE has grabbed most of that share, with the remainder going to Google's Chrome browser, which increased 0.23 percent.

Mobile browsers are slowly creeping up in usage as well. NetMarketShare pegs mobile browsers as holding 3.88 percent of the market in February 2011, up from 3.45 percent in December 2010, and that is likely understating the actual share. Mobile usage is hard to track, particularly with complicating factors, such as some mobile carriers stripping out the user agent strings used for tracking. The mobile number may look small, even if one allows for underestimation, but the mobile segment is growing very fast. Its market share was closer to 1 percent a year ago, and it will most likely chip away at the numbers for the big desktop browsers.