I thought I’d give an update on how the world is doing with ditching Internet Explorer 6. Between August 2009 and August 2010, IE6 usage has dropped from nearly 18% down to 8%. This is great news! IE6 usage has finally dropped lower than the “other” category of browsers. For more numbers, see here: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200908-201008
There’s a few reasons why we’ll see a very rapid decline in IE6 usage this year.
1) IE6 is old. The last time IE6 came included with an operating system was with Windows XP SP2, which was superceded by SP3 which included IE7 and automatic updates turned on by default on April 21, 2008. So if you’ve bought a computer after that, you likely got IE7 installed by default.
2) Windows XP is old, and the average lifespan of a computer is 3-5 years. Starting shortly after the release of Vista in January of 2007, I noticed it was difficult to buy a computer with Windows XP on it anymore. The largest user group of IE6 is large corporations. Often, large corporations have schedules for their upgrade process to upgrade their systems before they start suffering large repair bills on aging hardware. We’re approaching 4 years since 2007, so we’re going to see a lot of computers being upgraded to beat upwards spiraling attrition as units age (and to replace dead units) to new models that will come with a minimum of Windows Vista, and IE7. For consumers, the first time their brand new computer is connected to the internet, IE7 will beg you to upgrade to IE8, whereas IE6 was happy to sit and age as the only browser on the computer.
So we’re close to never having to worry about IE6 again. I predict 2011 is the year. Microsoft itself is only supporting IE6SP3 until 2014 with security updates.
