Netscape faces massacre in browser wars

NEWS Despite the introduction of new technology, Netscape carries on losing ground to Internet Explorer which now has well over 90 per cent of the market Netscape browsers have continued to lose market share at a steady pace, falling to a new low of 3.4 per cent as of this week, according to new figures. A twice-yearly survey from StatMarket, a division of analyst WebSideStory, showed that despite recent technological advances AOL Time Warner's Netscape browsers, which use technology from the open-source Mozilla project, have ceded more ground to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. A year ago, Netscape's market share stood at 13 per cent, but fell steeply to 7 per cent by March, as IE 6 gained popularity. IE has now reached 96 per cent market penetration, according to StatMarket, up from 87 per cent a year ago. Mozilla gained some market share when it finally reached a 1.0 release earlier this year, but browsers such as Mozilla and Opera still only accounted for less than 1 per cent of the market, StatMarket said. "The newest versions of Netscape have failed to win over users so far," said Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket, in a statement. "Unless AOL makes a move soon, Netscape may find itself battling Opera for the last 1 to 2 per cent of the market." StatMarket gathers its figures from more than 125,000 sites that use its visitor-analysis services. Matthew Broersma writes for ZDNet.co.uk