Why Are There so Many IE8 Users?
And why they aren’t going away anytime soon
If you build things for the web then chances are you’ve spent some time looking at user stats. How many logins per day? What are the most viewed pages? Which devices? And I bet there’s one stat where you keep shaking your head: why are there so many IE8 users?
According to the latest web browser trends IE8's global market share is less than 6%. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have long since taken over the browser landscape to push the web forward. That’s not anything new. But even as the overall decline of IE8 continues a large number of organizations are still using it with no apparent end in sight.
How’d we get here?
During the first half of the 2000's IE controlled the browser market with a 90%+ share. This is attributed to Windows’ dominance over other operating systems and the lack of competing web browsers (Netscape only). IE6 shipped with Windows XP in 2001 and allowed Microsoft technologies like ActiveX to be easily integrated with other applications. Support for those technologies was something companies adopted early and became dependent on. Then Microsoft halted development of IE for five years.
In 2004 Mozilla launched Firefox which quickly ate into IE’s market share. After years of an IE monopoly consumers were open to the idea of an alternative browser experience. By the time Google released Chrome in 2008 Firefox accounted for 20% of the global market share. The race for which browser could support the latest web technologies had begun in earnest. Except that race didn’t include IE.
IE8 was released in early 2009 and was the last version of IE developed for Windows XP, lacking real support for newer web features. Microsoft had bet big that consumer adoption of Windows Vista, followed by 7 and 8, would be met with open arms — and by extension bring users to newer versions of IE. It was a bad bet. Microsoft struggled to redefine itself during a period of years that saw a heavy shift away from Windows and toward devices like smartphones and tablets. In the end Microsoft painted consumers into a corner: those who didn’t upgrade from Windows XP were stuck on IE8.
Where does this leave us?
IE8's market share may be at an all-time low but the cost of continuing to support it — special code integration, ongoing bug fixes, etc. — remains high. Yes, someone could download a different web browser (if their company supported that option); IE8 could be used for legacy applications only and current browsers for everything else. But that’s not the kind of web we want to develop; a split experience where users have no choice but to continue using the old setup, making them less likely to adopt a new one.
Eventually this problem will will resolve itself. The unavoidable fact staring Microsoft in the face is that Windows adoption has slowed considerably. Lifecycle support for Windows XP will soon end and at some point organizations will have to make a long-term choice on a different platform.
But until that day be prepared to support IE8.
