Microsoft Internet Explorer Market Share Drops In Europe

Microsoft saw a small but significant plunge in Internet Explorer's market share in some particular European countries since it rolled out the browser ballot screen.

This solution is tailored to offer Windows users in the EU states a choice of internet browsers other than IE, data from a web analytics firm revealed.

Research firm StatCounter found that while IE’s share in other parts of the world remained more or less stable, its share in some of the big European markets, like UK and France, plummeted significantly since the “web browser choice screen” was introduced earlier this month.

While Microsoft’s signature browser lost around 1 percent in the UK and 1.3 percent in Italy, its market share in France dipped by 2.5 percent in just around a month after the browser ballot screen was rolled out on a trial basis.

Microsoft launched the ballot screen on the 1st of March on trial basis in some of the EU states as a rejoinder to European Commission’s probe over the bundling of IE as the default browser with Windows operating systems.

Among the browsers which gained from the IE’s decline, Opera has already mentioned that its browser download has tripled in some European countries, whereas Firefox said it experienced significant growth without further details.