The market share of Firefox vs. Internet Explorer

In his Open Road blog, Mat Asay was skeptical about some browser market share data because the sample audience was heavy on techies. The July 2008 stats for the site in question, W3Schools.com,
were:

W3Schools.com
BROWSER	USAGE
Internet Explorer	52%
Firefox	43%
Safari	2%
Opera	2%

Into this discussion, I'd like to add my own numbers.
My JavaTester.org website also leans a bit towards a technical audience. To seek out the site, you have to know what Java is and that there are different versions of it. In July 2008 the site averaged 8,050 page views a day, according to awstats. Interestingly, the July usage stats also showed Internet Explorer at 52 percent, the same as W3Schools.

javatester.org
BROWSER	USAGE
Internet Explorer	52%
Firefox	32%
Netscape	4%
Mozilla	4%
Safari	2%
Opera	2%

The most popular site that I manage belongs to a client whose audience has no interest in technology. The site averaged 12,477 page views per day in July, also according to awstats. The market share there shows Internet Explorer did better, as did Safari.

Non-techies
Internet Explorer	62%
Firefox	26%
Safari	6%
Mozilla	2%

In short, among techies, IE was used 52 percent of the time and Firefox either 32 percent or 43 percent. The higher percentage was at W3Schools.com and chances are that their users are more technically inclined than those at Javatester.org. Among a more general audience of web users, IE scored 62 percent and Firefox 26 percent.
It seems that as the technical awareness of the the audience decreases, the use of Internet Explorer increases.

Does this remind you of Windows? Businesses are, for the most part, sticking with XP while consumers find nothing
but Vista on retail shelves.
See a summary of all my
Defensive Computing postings.

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