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Netscape Still Leads, IDC Study Finds

Despite dramatic gains by Internet Explorer, Navigator is still the browser of choice; most of the growth in this market is in the small-business segment.

By James Niccolai, IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau   

Netscape's share of the browser market in 1997 was 50.5 percent, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer was used by 42.8 percent of Web surfers, IDC said. America Online's browser came in third, with 3 percent.

Netscape saw its market share increase among small-business users only, IDC said. But with more than 50 percent of the market, Netscape is unlikely to be toppled from its overall leadership position in 1998, predicted Joan-Carol Brigham, a research manager in IDC's Internet continuous information research service and one of the report's authors.

Neither Microsoft nor Netscape derive revenues from their browsers, but having a larger share of the market is viewed as being of strategic importance to the companies.

In 1996 Microsoft held 18.5 percent of the small-business market relative to Netscape's 44.4 percent. In 1997, Microsoft gained 8.2 percent in small business, for 26.7 percent of the U.S. share, whereas Netscape gained 2.3 percent for a 46.7 percent share.

Shipments of Web browsers within the U.S. are expected to grow from 10.1 million units in 1997 to 124.3 million units in 2002, a compound annual growth rate of 52 percent, IDC said in the report.

Other findings in the report, titled "U.S. World Wide Web Browser Market Review And Forecast, 1997-2002," include the following:

• From 1996 to 1997, a shift occurred in applications used with the browser. E-mail, calendaring and scheduling, and document management made significant gains.
• An examination of the five user segments (home, small business, medium-sized and large businesses, government, and education) shows most of the growth in the browser market occurred in small businesses.