Here is another market. Pakistan, India's neighbor did similar thing three months back. Good to see that as internet penetrates this region it is with a good capable browser.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-PK-monthly-201106-201108-...

IE will never regain their old glory days. FF and Chrome rule the browser world already.

"IE will never regain their old glory days."

Thank goodness for that.

You never know. IE9 isn't half bad, and IE10 is looking promising.

IE9 & 10 are a huge leap from IE8 but as a web developer, IE10 compares more to Firefox 3.6 in number of features: http://caniuse.com/#compare=y&b1=ie+10&b2=firefox+3.... (of course, counting features is not an accurate way to compare browsers but the point still remains).

Yes, but in the words of HP: "The tablet effect is real." Windows devices are no longer going to have a lion's share of devices used for web browsing.

Part of me feels like that in order to bring people back, they need to change the name. IE has had such an awful reputation for the last decade or so.

1. I think that awful reputation is with a tiny fraction of the population.

2. I do not have data to back it up, but I would think over half of all IE users do not know it is called Internet Explorer. So, changing the name would not make a difference. Significantly changing the icon, on the other hand, would be a help desk's worst nightmare.

I imagine IE is more the default browser when people buy PC's or laptops. FF and Chrome are browsers out of choice. I can't imagine lay people in India (my friends and relatives or people in my HR department) installing FF or wanting to check out other browsers. So it is remarkable that FF is #1.

Until other browsers can match FF's vimperator/pentadactyl, there's no way I can seriously consider moving. (I've tried Chrome, Opera and Safari)

Agree, I don't think StatCounter data can give a good representation of Indian internet population

Google did a pretty extensive ad campaign on TV and print in India for Chrome - recently. Maybe that has given them a push.

Tough to explain FF's performance though. Surprising.

Firefox is #1 in India? Pretty big accomplishment for Mozilla, though by the looks of it that position won't last long.

I am intrigued to understand how StatCounter comes up with this graph. Do they have their own toolbars? Do they talk to ISPs? What is the demography of indian surfers who StatCounter have accounted for.

Without these parameters openly discussed this looks shady.

StatCounter provide an analytics service similar to Google Analytics. StatCounter seem to be referenced a lot on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers so I assume it is about as accurate as we are going to get. The Wikpedia article has more details on the accuracy of measuring browser share.

Although Opera started to deteriorate somewhere after version 10, trying to do too much instead of focusing on main browser things, I always scratch my head when I see how few people us it. It really is a nice browser.

It's been trying to do too much forever. I can switch between Chrome, IE and Firefox of any version without a blink. With Opera, I am immediately turned off. There's just so much noise.

Is the stats presented by StatCounter a reliable gauge of the entire country's browser usage?

It's debatable. StatCounter measures usage (not users), and gathers data by websites including it, I believe. Generally StatCounter overstates Firefox and Chrome numbers, see the comparison on Wikipedia's browser share page,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

But it is still a good indicator of trends, most likely, even if it is biased.

Those are the kind of shares I like to see - multiple browsers all with a share of the market, so that it's impossible for any one company to dominate.

Not very surprising. I remember seeing full page ads for Chrome in major newspapers. I have also seen lot of word of mouth for Chrome and FF. (People asking friends, family members to try out Chrome or FF). I still remember the days when me and my friends used to install FF in all the browsing centers (not every one had broadband at that time) we visit when FF came out.

I am surprised to see the numbers. Not sure I should believe them because most of Indian corporates, including the IT service industry, which employs the largest chuck of IT people run on Windows and do now allow their employees installing any new browser. That is true for even the fancy startups like flipkart.com where my friend used to work till last month. So these numbers need to be verified.

What about Chrome Frame? Can't that bypass the restrictions?

Until a feature-complete NoScript alternative exists for Google Chrome or Opera, it's hard for me to switch. I like the security it provides, which is much more than blocking JavaScript nowadays.

stats looks nice, but there is still A LOT of IE6 users (a little below 9-10% as trying to read from graph) ... sad for web developers