Internet Explorer has lost market share in major European markets, such as France, Britain and Italy, following the launch of the Windows browser ballot.
The browser ballot gives users the choice of 12 rival browsers, if Internet Explorer is installed as the default browser.
According to web statistics firm Statcounter, Internet Explorer’s share of all web surfing has dropped by 2.5% in France, 1% in Britain and 1.3% in Italy over the past month.
Browser shoot-out
Opera, the fourth largest browser firm, has seen downloads more than double in Europe because of the choice screen, with downloads in Italy, Spain and Poland more than tripling.
Mozilla says it has also seen a surge in interest. “We have seen significant growth in the number of new Firefox users as a result of the ballot choice screen,” said a Mozilla spokesperson. “We expect these numbers to increase as the ballot choice screen fully rolls out across all countries.”
Smaller web browsers, which have expressed concern that they’re being squeezed out of the picture, have seen much lower levels of growth. At first sight, Microsoft’s ballot screen shows only Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome. It isn’t immediately obvious that the seven other choices are available by scrolling to the right.
“To date, new downloads of Flock originating from the browser choice screen have only contributed marginally to growth in overall downloads,” said the makers of Flock in a statement. “This is also the case for the other browsers not on the main screen.”
“We hope that the changes recommended in our urgent petition to the European Commission are implemented so that all the browsers that have been placed to the right of the main screen will have a reasonable chance of being found and considered by European consumers,” Flock added.
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