Internet Explorer Losses More Market Share

Internet Explorer's market share has dropped for the fifth straight month to reach a new record low. The browser lost 1.6 percentage points ending December with a 68.2% share, down from November's previous record low of 69.8%

According to Web analytics company Net Applications IE ended the year down 7.9% points, a 10.4% decline from December 2007. This marks the second straight month of record lows for IE and record highs for FireFox, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari.

Chrome ended the year above 1% for the first time, while Safari neared an 8% marker share. FireFox is steadily gaining ground staying above the 20% level at its new record high of 21.34%.

Net applications notes that the December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. Meaning the results might be skewed, as Net Applications says usage of non-Microsoft browsers climbs after work hours, on weekends and during holidays, as users surf from home computers rather than from work machines, which are far more likely to run Microsoft's IE. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage.