Latest Stats as at 2/1/2009.
These figures cover the 15-day period 16/12/2008 to 31/12/2008. 


Vista Market Share
==================

For period 16th to 31st December 2008, figures based on visits:-

XP 64.2 (was 66.2, 66.7, 68.9, 69.9, 68.6, 69.2, 70.4, 71.6, 71.8)
Vista 21.9 (was 19.6, 19.7, 18.0, 17.0, 17.9, 18.3, 17.5, 15.9)
Other Windows 3.9 (was 4.3, 4.2, 4.7, 4.7, 5.3, 4.5, 4.5, 4.0, 4.5)
Mac 7.3 (was 7.6, 7.3, 6.6, 6.6, 6.6, 6.1, 6.0, 6.3, 5.8)
Linux 1.2 (was 0.9, 1.1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.4) 
Others 1.5 (was 1.3, 1.1, 0.7, 0.8, 0.7, 0.7, 0.4, 0.7, 0.6)

Vista has climbed from 19.6 to 21.9 with a corresponding fall 
in the XP result. Perhaps some of this is caused by people surfing 
from home with Vista over Christmas, but it seems that shoppers 
who have unwrapped their new toys are surfing with Vista.  

Usage of earlier versions of Windows than XP and Vista continues 
to decline gradually, the figure above is the first result under 4%.

The figure for Linux does not include a few "heavy hitters" who 
are testing rather than browsing.  I have been manually adjusting 
the Linux results to remove (i) The SearchMe search engine and 
its crawler Charlotte who claim they are Firefox 2 on Linux
(ii) A handful of sites using a browser named Minefield because 
these are not people surfing the net, they are testing the latest 
version of Firefox. (iii) A few other cases where it's a search
engine not a human.  Together, these cases reduce the Linux
percentage from around 1.9 to 1.2.

The Others category continues to increase.  
The iPhone is the market leader for smart phones.


Browser Breakup
===============

Percentages for the period 16th to 31st December...

IE 63.5 (was 67.5, 68.7, 69.5, 69.4, 68.9, 69.9, 69.7, 70.5, 71.4)
FF 26.2 (was 23.2, 22.3, 22.4, 22.6, 22.9, 22.3, 22.5, 21.7, 21.3)  
Safari 5.9 (was 5.7, 5.6, 5.1, 5.0, 5.0, 4.8, 4.4, 4.8, 4.8)
Chrome 1.2 (was 1.1, 0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 0.9, 0.7, 0.8)
Opera 1.0 (was 0.8, 0.9, 0.8, 0.9, 0.9, 0.7, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1)
All Others 1.6 (was 1.7, 1.6, 1.3, 1.4, 1.4, 1.7, 1.6, 1.9, 1.7)

This result is quite startling.  IE has fallen by 4.0% with 3.0% 
going to Firefox and the rest to the minor players.

I attribute this fall to bad publicity for IE during December.  
This publicity reached the mainstream newspapers, not just 
the computer press.  My earlier comments about Firefox having 
peaked or approaching an upper limit soon are no longer relevant. 
Bad publicity has damaged the IE brand a great deal. 


Search Engines Share
==================== 

Breakup of visits coming via search engines 
for December 16th to 31st:-

Google 84.3 (was 85.6, 86.9, 85.8, 86.3, 87.0, 86.4, 87.8, 87.2)
Yahoo 9.1 (was 7.9, 7.6, 7.6, 8.1, 7.5, 7.8, 6.8, 7.3, 7.3, 8.0)
Microsoft 3.2 (was 3.0, 2.7, 3.1, 2.5, 2.0, 2.3, 1.7, 2.0, 3.3, 2.6)
All others 3.3 (was 3.6, 2.7, 3.4, 3.1, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.5, 5.0)

Yahoo has jumped up to 9.1% and Google has fallen to 84.3, 
which is the lowest result for Google shown above.  
The reason for this surge is unknown, but if it is a real trend, 
then one must ask "what has Yahoo done right?".

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