Is it time for IT to reevaluate which browsers it supports? The latest report on the browser wars, courtesty of Net Applications’ monthly updates, shows that worldwide, Internet Explorer — in all its flavors — still holds a big lead at 53.7 percent. But look at the trend lines and it’s easy to see that IE is being hurt by Google’s Chrome, which has inched up in just the past month from a 12.5 percent share to 13.1 percent. That continues a slow but steady climb that’s been going on for almost two years. Mozilla’s Firefox is holding steady at about 20 percent, and Apple’s iPad is now responsible for 1 percent of all browser usage worldwide. Within the IE environment, IE 9 has a 5.7 percent worldwide share, but on Windows 7, that rises to 21.8 percent in the U.S. and 15.6 percent globally. One other interesting bit: Mobile phones and tablets have surpassed 5 percent of browser usage worldwide. In the U.S., it's 8.2 percent. The iPhone's out front with 2.9 percent, and Android phones follow with 2.6 percent. If nothing else, this latest batch of numbers should inspire any IT expert who has ignored Chrome to at least do a quick evaluation, looking especially at performance, where the browser earns the most praise.

Source: cnet