What is the current market share for browsers in the U.S. (percentage of 
people using IE, Netscape, etc)?

Hi Mark Thom!

The current browser market share for Microsoft IE can be estimated to be about 
70%, with Netscape gathering about 24% and other browsers accounting for the 
remaining 6%. However, since most of the specific information regarding current 
browser use requires that a fee be paid to the researching company – this is 
only estimation. It should be noted that numbers do vary greatly from source to 
source and on global vs. US statistics. 

I was able to find a number of resources regarding browser usage that will 
hopefully provide you with more on the information you are seeking. 

Janco Associates, Inc. has a detailed study of the browser market dating back 
to November 1997 through January 2002. This study details usage February, May 
and November in a number of informative graphs that compare the market 
penetration of Netscape, Internet Explorer and AOL. These graphs are currently 
available for free, although the website does note that in the future updates 
will have a fee. You can check out these graphs at:
http://www.e-janco.com/browser.htm

Janco Associates, Inc released a Press Release on February 7, 2002 that 
detailed the findings of their new report. The press release titled “Microsoft 
Loses 15.6% of the Browser Market in the Last 12 Months.” is available at:
http://www.e-janco.com/PressRelease/press_release%20Browser%2020020207.htm
From the press release:  “Park City, UT - In an interview today, M. Victor 
Janulaitis, the CEO of Janco Associates, Inc., released the results of an 
extensive ongoing study of Internet Browser War. In that study, PSR found that 
Microsoft’s browsers (versions 3, 4 and 5) were used in 47.6% of all internet 
sessions versus Netscape’s browsers (versions 3, 4 and 5) which garnered 28.9%. 
AOL continues to show a marked increase in penetration with 15.8% of the 
market. These results are as of January 31, 2002.

Mr. Janulaitis said, “AOL and Netscape are continuing to get more users as 
users now have more and better options that Microsoft.” … Microsoft lost almost 
16% of the browser market while AOL and Netscape picked up those users”

Webreview.com also has information on the “browser wars.” I have replicated a 
table of current US market share from their data below. This data, however, 
does not include more recent releases of Internet Explorer 6 or Netscape 6. 
This table is a replication of the table posted by Web Review at: 
http://www.webreview.com/browsers/browser_faq.shtml

Browser 			% of US Market Share 
==========================================================
Microsoft Internet Explorer (MS IE) 5.x		24.9 %
MS IE 4.x					44.7 %
MS IE 3.x					 3.6 %
Netscape 4.x					22.0 %	
Netscape 3.x					 2.3 %
MS Web TV					 1.4 % 
Other						 1.1 % 

Web Review has detailed information on the browser industry and 
interoperability available at their site at:
http://www.webreview.com/browsers/index.shtml

David Berkowitz wrote an article for eMarketer.com that has a useful breakdown 
of browser market share that compares different research company findings (i.e. 
Browserwatch vs. websnapshot.com etc.). The article does not indicate whether 
or not these are global or US statistics. 
“Interview: Verdi or not, Hear Opera Come” by David Berkowitz for eMarketer.com 
(November 13, 2001). 
http://www.emarketer.com/estatnews/enews/opera.html

I calculated the average market share according to these sources as: 
Browser 			% of Market Share 
==========================================================
Microsoft Internet Explorer 		86.6 %
Netscape				 9.4 %		
Other					 4.0 %

StatMarket.com offers a comprehensive report on the Browser industry for a fee. 
http://www.statmarket.com/
Portions of their current report are available from their press release and 
find the global browser market to break down as follows:
 “As of March 25, 2002, IE 6’s global browser usage share was 30.5 percent, up 
from 2.4 percent shortly after its initial launch only seven months ago, 
according to WebSideStory’s StatMarket (www.statmarket.com), a leading source 
for data on global Internet user trends. Meanwhile, Netscape’s global usage 
share has sharply declined. Netscape held steady with about a 12 percent global 
usage share for more than a year, until the release of IE6, at which point it 
began dropping precipitously. Netscape’s global usage share is currently just 
over 7 percent. Global browser usage share is the percentage of daily Internet 
users worldwide that access the Internet through a particular browser.”
http://www.statmarket.com/cgi-bin/sm.cgi?sm&feature&week_stat


Additional Websites that may interest you: 

“IE 6 gains foothold in browser market” By Gwendolyn Mariano for CNET News.com 
(September 6, 2001) 
“Microsoft's recently released Internet Explorer 6 has taken 2.4 percent of the 
browser market, quickly closing in on AOL Time Warner's Netscape 6, according 
to a new study.”

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-272740.html

Aria Lookin' for a New Browser? By Andy Patrizio for Wired Magazine (Nov. 14, 
2001). 
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48371,00.html
“With Microsoft owning over 70 percent of the browser market and Netscape 
picking up about 25 percent, there's not a whole lot left to fight over, but 
Opera has gained ground for its small size -- around 3 MB -- and fast 
interface.” 

Mozilla poised for revival  By Jim Hu  for CNET News.Com (April 12, 2002). 
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-881529.html


Search Terms Used: 
Browser market share
Browser wars
US browser market share 


Hope this answers your question!
Firefly

Recent figures on market share can be found at:

http://www.statmarket.com/cgi-bin/sm.cgi?sm&feature&week_stat

A few things to keep in mind:

Most of the newer browser report themselves as Internet Explorer in order to gain compatability. Some of them (like Opera) even go so far as to run javascript intended for other browsers. 

Additionally, some of the counters mentioned above, are javascript based. That means, a page is only counted when the javascript is executed. Not all browsers have javascript enabled.

There are also counter caching issues to be considered. Not all browser will re-download a counter image (thus triggering the counter) when it runs into the image on another page. They do this to speed up page loads. Therefore, those browsers are under counted.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&frame=right&th=73d82f98c17c770f&seekm=2kr4vtkjna8l7730fcgef81blib0um248s%404ax.com#link1

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=counters+group:opera.general&start=10&hl=en&selm=386242A3.47C0C86C%40home.com&rnum=11

http://www.searchengineworld.com/newsletter/1999/q3/stats.htm

The major browser reporting sites are at best, a good guess. I think it is clear that several of them have vastly over estimated the leading browsers due to the errors in the methodology mentioned above.

An interesting overview from the real world:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/1344.htm

This is a somewhat difficult question due to the lack of accurate
measurement.

First, lets start with the market share question.  Short of visiting
every home and office in America and asking what kind of browser is
used, the way you measure this is to check the browser logs at a large
web site.  You can extrapolate from there.  For instance, the Google
Zetigeist (://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) shows a graph
of browser usage at Google throughout a few months.  This will
generally tell you the Market Share for Browsers Used to Access Google
-- which may be what you want.

Secondly, the much more difficult problem is to determine which
country the web browser is coming from -- to limit your search to US
Market Share.  The old adage was to only count domains in .mil, .gov,
.com, .edu, and .us.  With the increasing internationalization of the
internet, this no longer holds true -- there are a number of .com
addresses that actually reside in foreign countries.  Projects like
http://www.geobutton.com/ and http://www.networldmap.com/ are making
these kinds of metrics more accurate, however.

Large internet content providers, like Yahoo, Google, and DoubleClick
are probably in the best position to determine this kind of data.

Finally, on the other end of the market share question, the Netcraft
surveys have always been the canonical source for this kind of
information -- at least in my eyes.   http://www.netcraft.co.uk/