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Internet Explorer catching up to Navigator, research group finds
| July 13, 1998 Web posted at: 7:01 PM PT by Cheri Paquet |
From...
|
(IDG)
-- Although Netscape's Navigator remains the primary browser used within
businesses, its lead is slipping as Microsoft's Internet Explorer is being
adopted by more companies at a steady rate, according to a Zona Research
poll released on Monday.
Fifty-four percent of the census participants are using Netscape Navigator, down from 62 percent in last September's poll; 45 percent responded that they use Internet Explorer, up from 36 percent, Zona found.
"We have seen a slow march for IE gaining 1 percentage point per month, since last January; while Navigator has lost 1.2 percent per month," said Zona vice president and chief analyst Clay Ryder. "We are not convinced, however, that there will be a flip-flop from Navigator to IE as the primary browser of choice within enterprises."
Which browser will retain the spot as the primary browser used will depend on corporate purchasing choices, meaning companies that purchase their Web server software from Netscape, for example, will likely also install the company's Web client, Ryder said.
The fluctuations occurred even though Navigator's product and source code are freely available, Zona said.
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Zona's periodical Web Browser Census is based on 260 randomly selected corporate IT professionals.
Sixty-four percent of those surveyed indicated their company either encourages or requires use of a particular browser, up from 59 percent in September, according to Zona.
Fifty-five percent of IT professionals employed by companies with a browser policy indicated that IE was the standard, while 45 percent use Navigator. IE's highest growth rate has been in this area, Zona added.
A third of the installed copies of IE are the older Version 3, the study found, which Zona attributes to the reluctance of IT departments to tamper with existing Windows 95 installations that include the browser, Ryder said.
"The IT department is loading up on the IE, since it comes with Win95 and is not making effort to install a discreet browser. It is a matter of not taking an extra step," Ryder said. "A primary concern is the cost of the desktop -- and this means one less piece to load and to worry about."
Because there are so few differences between IE 3.0 and IE 4.0, IT managers do not see a reason to go through the effort to upgrade, Ryder said.
"They [IT managers] have bigger fish to fry than to worry about what is more convenient to users," Ryder said.
In the future, third-party browser-generated sales will be gone, with Netscape and Microsoft left to compete, Ryder said.
"For the first time, we see that Microsoft's IE seems to have become more often the policy browser of choice," Ryder said. "This is going to be like a choice between Coke and Pepsi -- time will tell."
Cheri Paquet is a San Francisco correspondent for the IDG News Service.
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