IE6 bowing out, IE8 going strong

Internet Explorer 6 has less than 5% share of the market, IE8 approaching 31%

Web developers everywhere should be celebrating over today's new statistics.

Internet Explorer 6, the Microsoft browser initially launched in 2001, now has a hold on about 4.7% of the US market, down from 11.5% a year ago, according to Web analytics company StatCounter.

The browser was notorious for giving developers headaches because it is not a standard-compliant browser like Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari. Not only will developers be happy to hear today's news, but Microsoft too will be pleased.

While IE6 is on the way out, Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft's latest browser in the series, now has a 30.5% share of the US market, as compared to 8.5% last year in May. IE7 has about a 16.6% share.

All together, Internet Explorer has penetrated just over half the market.

The second most used browser in the US is Firefox 3.6 (its current most stable release) with nearly 20% of the market, followed by Google Chrome 4.0 with a 6.5% share. (Chrome 5.0 is the latest most stable release.)

Most developers would like to have IE6 killed by now, with its lack of standard-compliance and glaring security issues, but it's just not that easy. While some of the bigger sites, like YouTube and Posterous, can and have certainly dropped support for the browser to speed its death, IE6 still has over 20% penetration in Africa and Asia.

Nevertheless, for a browser that had over 90% market share in the early part of the decade, a less than 5% share should be quite enough of a drop to make most developers happy.