I mistrust technology trend estimates, because they are so often off-course and driven by the pundit’s desires and the need to be on the Next Big Thing. (I feel the same way about political polls, for analogous reasons. But I digress.) That said, I keep reading more and more articles like this about how Micro$oft is in big trouble with IE, and how Firefox (as an example and in particular) is picking up its defectors. And not just in “Mozilla Gazzette” or “Microsoft Haters Journal,” but in mainstream trades.
So what does this mean for the majority of Windows users, who aren’t even on Windows XP? Microsoft officials have said these users must upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 to gain the new security and capability improvements in IE.
I think Microsoft has it at least partially right. A lot of users will decide they want improved features and increased security in their Web browser, and they will decide to upgrade — but not to Windows XP SP 2.
We’ve already seen the beginning trickle of users moving away from IE: For the first time in years, IE’s market share has dropped slightly. But I predict that this trickle will soon become a full-fledged torrent. In fact, I fully expect that, a year from now, IE’s market share will be below 75 percent. (Check me on that in October 2005.) And that’s being conservative because this would be a smaller drop than the Netscape browser ever took once it began to lose share. (And Netscape the company never did anything as stupid as telling users they could get new features only by using one operating system.)
More important, the writer gives some anecdotal evidence that this is not just geeks preaching to geeks, but that the word about Firefox and other browsers is leaching out to mainstream users.
Should be interesting to see what happens. I’ll know it’s arrived when my folks ask to have it installed on their PC …
(via adot)