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Google, Apple gain ground on Microsoft's Internet Explorer
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Font ResizeBy Mike Swiftmswift@mercurynews.comPosted: 01/04/2011 06:47:17 PM PSTUpdated: 01/05/2011 04:35:52 AM PST
Breaking a decade of global dominance, Microsoft's Internet Explorer in December lost its spot as the browser with the majority of page views in the United States and surrendered its long-held place to Mozilla's Firefox as Europe's most popular browser, according to data released Tuesday by the web analytics firm StatCounter.
"It's a huge milestone," Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Ireland-based StatCounter, said in an interview. "IE has ruled the roost for a decade."
Browsers are a key battleground in the rivalry between Internet giants Microsoft, Apple and Google, and their ongoing evolution is rapidly expanding the kinds of tasks users easily can perform online, from gaming to video to social networking to work.
Competing analysts have different estimates of browser market share. NetApplications.com says Internet Explorer still owns 59 percent of U.S. browser market share, compared with StatCounter's estimate of 48 percent. But they agree on a basic trend: Instead of the unchallenged dominance Microsoft enjoyed at the turn of the century, or the David-and-Goliath struggle following Mountain View-based nonprofit Mozilla's launch of Firefox in 2004, the Internet is quickly moving toward having four browsers with double-digit market shares. Internet Explorer is losing ground, Firefox is staying flat, and both Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome are gaining popularity.
"You have a rebalancing
that is taking place in the browser space," said Al Hilwa, an analyst with the research firm IDC. "Google is the gorilla here; that's the big change. They are on a very fast-paced rise in a market that usually doesn't change that fast. They are hurting Firefox as well as Microsoft."With browsers evolving as the primary way to watch video outside TV, and as the platform to run applications from games to digital magazines to punching a timecard, new Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said Tuesday that the evolution of browsers will shape the Internet's future -- in the way browsers manage user data, or whether their software code is open-source or closed and proprietary.
"The market share of the Firefox versus the Internet Explorer versus the Chrome browser is a monument of a battle that is going on now, but it isn't the only battle that matters on the Internet today," Kovacs said.
In a manner few could have imagined five years ago, many Americans use multiple browsers at work, at home and on their smartphones.
Consider Gloria Del Mar, a 30-year-old psychology student at DeAnza College. Just five years ago, she used only Internet Explorer. Now, she said, she uses Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE. "Whatever is fastest and has the best connection, that's the one you keep," she said.
Since Google launched Chrome in September 2008, it has vaulted to about 12 percent of the U.S. market share and 14 percent in Europe, according to StatCounter, whose estimates are based on an analysis of 15 billion monthly page views. Google says Chrome's global user population has grown fourfold, from 30 million users in May 2009 to more than 120 million in December.
Google has recently run newspaper ads in the U.S., India and Europe to promote Chrome, and in December, it launched an online store for Chrome software applications designed to boost the number of users.
With Mozilla planning to release a new generation of Firefox, version 4.0, in the next six weeks or so, Kovacs acknowledged that the upstart that shattered Microsoft's browser dominance is at a critical juncture, needing to produce a strong browser to remain relevant to the Internet's future. Mozilla, Kovacs said, is now subject to the freedom of choice it helped create by first challenging Microsoft. Mozilla spawned a global community of volunteers and developers who contribute to the local customization of Firefox, which now has over 400 million users.
"Yeah, there is a threat because of Chrome, a threat to Firefox. But frankly, if we just sit on Firefox as a browser, we should feel threatened," he said in an interview Tuesday at Mozilla's headquarters in downtown Mountain View. "A lot of the things that we evangelized and delivered, (Google) is also doing now, so in one sense, we look at that as a success. But on the other hand, to stay relevant in this Internet discussion, we have to deliver a great product."
While Apple had no comment Tuesday about Safari's growth, Microsoft, which is developing Internet Explorer 9, said IE8 remains the world's most popular browser version.
"We are really pleased with the customer reaction we've seen to our newest browser, with over 20 million people downloading the IE9 beta, making it our fastest adopted browser beta to date," Microsoft said in a written statement. But the company is only making IE9 available to users with the Windows 7 or Vista operating systems, so Windows XP users can't use the newest browser.
"Internally at Microsoft, they must be agonizing over that decision," Hilwa said. While Microsoft is trying to move people to its new operating systems, he said, "in reality, it's only making them use other browsers."
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Microsoft tablet aimed at fighting iPad faces long odds in Vegas
Print Email Font ResizeBy Ian King and Adam Satariano Bloomberg NewsPosted: 12/27/2010 07:49:14 PM PSTUpdated: 12/27/2010 08:50:59 PM PST
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, said to unveil new software for tablets at the Consumer Electronics Show next week, will face skeptics who say his company won't soon narrow Apple's iPad lead.
"By the time Microsoft gets it figured out everybody will already own an iPad," said Keith Goddard, CEO of Capital Advisors, an investing firm in Tulsa, Okla., that holds Apple shares. "That train has left the station."
Microsoft will announce a full version of the Windows computer operating system that runs on ARM Holdings technology at the show, which begins in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, two people familiar with Microsoft's plans said last week.
Allying with ARM is Microsoft's way of stepping up rivalry with Apple, which has garnered the largest share of the tablet market with its iPad, a touch-screen device introduced in April that handles video, music and computing tasks. The effort may falter unless Ballmer can match the features consumers have come to expect from the iPad, Goddard said.
The new Windows version would be tailored for battery-powered devices, such as tablets and wireless handsets, the people said. Chips based on ARM technology are made by Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Samsung Electronics.
Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, declined to comment, pointing instead to remarks by Ballmer in July.
"We're tuning Windows 7 to new slate hardware designs," Ballmer told analysts then. He also said, Apple
has "sold certainly more than I'd like them to sell."Computer makers have unsuccessfully been trying to sell tablet-style computers based on Microsoft's Windows for about a decade. Before the iPad, tablets made up only about 2 percent of the PC market. Apple, based in Cupertino, has sold 7.46 million iPads through September. According to analysts at Goldman Sachs Group, it may sell as many at 37.2 million iPads next year.
That indicates that the tablet computer's share of the PC market may rise to 9.2 percent next year, based on a prediction by research firm IDC for 402.7 million PC shipments in 2011.
Besides gaining share, Apple has also redefined consumer expectations for what a tablet computer should do, says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner. Instead of requiring the use of a stylus pen to serve as a computer mouse, the iPad allows people to navigate using their fingers.
"Apple did this year what no one had done in the previous 10 -- crack that space between the PC and the phone," said Gartenberg, who's based in New York. "Microsoft has been working very hard at putting a square peg in a round hole."
Still, an introduction at CES gives Microsoft a chance to win over some of the more than 100,000 people expected to attend the premier technology trade show, he said.
"It's a wonderful opportunity for Microsoft and Ballmer to put a stake in the ground," said Gartenberg. "Now that Apple cracked the market no one wants to get left behind."
By adapting its computer operating system for a tablet, Microsoft is taking a different approach from Apple, which used a mobile-phone operating system as the basis for the iPad.
Microsoft is taking software designed for use with a mouse and keyboard and adapting it to a touch screen, according to the people familiar with the matter. That will require developers to rework PC programs to make them useful on a tablet.
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Blekko, Montage offer new ways to search the Web
Print Email Font ResizeBy Mike Swiftmswift@mercurynews.comPosted: 12/27/2010 12:08:00 AM PSTUpdated: 12/27/2010 05:44:35 AM PST
Internet search engines have become such a helpful fixture of everyday life that it's tough to imagine life before them. They gather information at eye-blink speed, can guess a user's intent and present real-time results from Twitter and other social sites.
But the experience of searching the Web remains largely solitary, or, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might put it -- it's not social. While you can share the end result by pasting a link into an e-mail or a tweet, there's no way to share the cool stuff you brush past in the midst of a search.
That's starting to change, thanks to new search products, one from a Silicon Valley startup called Blekko and one from a tech giant as mainstream as they come, Microsoft.
Blekko, a Redwood City search engine that can be found online at blekko.com, tries to screen out spam and links promoted by search engine optimization (SEO) companies, which manipulate keywords and links to try to promote their clients in search results. But as of mid-December, Blekko also allows you to use your Facebook friends to filter Internet searches. In a sense, your friends provide the search algorithm, rather than Google or Bing.
The main focus of Blekko, which launched in November and has received funding from prominent Silicon Valley investors like Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, is to use human editors to select a universe of authoritative websites. Blekko's intent is to
screen out spam and SEO manipulation that can make many sites less useful, particularly in topics like personal finance, music lyrics and health.Earlier this month, Blekko also started to allow users to harness their network of Facebook friends to "curate" search results. When a Blekko user enables the service, the search engine goes out and collects the large database of websites and pages that have been "liked" by the users' Facebook friends. The user can then filter subsequent searches so Blekko favors pages and websites that were endorsed by their friends.
"When somebody reads an article (on a newspaper website) and 'likes' the article, or 'likes' the site itself, that is somebody giving a quality vote -- especially when it's somebody that you know," said Mike Markson, chief marketing officer for Blekko. "That is a social vote which is saying, 'This is a good quality site; this isn't spam.' "
It can be a fun and powerful tool. When I searched Blekko for "financial advisers," my Facebook friends -- some of whom I would trust for financial advice and others I wouldn't -- produced much more interesting results than what was delivered by Google and Bing, which were jammed with commercially sponsored links.
The tool, however, doesn't always work well. A search for Boston Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett produced a top link that I definitely didn't want -- a news story about my favorite team being thrashed by the Orlando Magic in a playoff game last spring. Blekko apparently promoted that link because a lot of my Facebook friends are journalists, and a lot of them had "liked" the Orlando Sentinel's website.
If nothing else, Blekko's new social search service is a reminder of how your view of the world can be shaped by your friends.
Another interesting new social search service is Montage, an experimental service created by Microsoft's Future Social Experience Labs (or FUSE), a 30-person team at Microsoft that is trying to create real-time, media-rich online experiences that people can share with their friends.
Microsoft announced earlier this month that its Bing search engine would start showing whether a user's Facebook friends have liked a particular link that Bing has found. But Microsoft is also trying to build new products that make search more social, such as Montage. You can try Montage at fuse.microsoft.com.
The service allows you to find and gather up recent content on the Web about a particular topic, including news stories, photos, video, tweets and even analytics that track interest in a topic. You can edit those elements into a digital album, which you can share on Twitter or Facebook.
I did a Montage search for "SpaceX," the Southern California company that this month became the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and then safely recover it back on Earth.
Montage is simple and intuitive to use. Within a few minutes, I had built a pretty cool page with an embedded video from YouTube of the Dec. 8 liftoff. My page included an array of news stories and photos I arranged on the page and a Twitter feed to track what people were saying about the launch. I was even able to add an analytics tile showing how traffic on Twitter spiked the day of the launch. I shared my album on my Facebook page; you can check it out at: http://bit.ly/hvyEnV.
Montage "is kind of like looking at the whole search experience end to end. It doesn't have to be a disposable process like it is today," said Matthew MacLaurin, director of FUSE Labs. "It's really saying the whole search experience should include the capture and rebroadcast of what you find, and not the single goal-oriented end state."
A Facebook friend even hit the Like button for my Montage album. Maybe it will even show up on a Blekko search someday.
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Video game industry sales down
Print Email Font ResizeBy Troy Wolvertontwolverton@mercurynews.comPosted: 01/14/2011 01:50:46 PM PSTUpdated: 01/15/2011 04:23:25 AM PST
The economy is no longer officially in recession, but the video game industry continues to be in a slump.
U.S. retail sales of game products fell 9 percent in December from the same month the year before, NPD Group reported this week. Thanks to the holiday slump during the industry's most important month, the industry posted its second straight year of declining sales.
That's a marked turnaround for the industry, which posted robust sales growth through much of the past decade and initially appeared immune to the effects of the Great Recession, which officially ended in June 2009. Sales of game products grew 19 percent in 2008, the last positive year for the industry.
"It's hard to find much good to say about 2010," said Michael Pachter, a financial analyst who covers the industry for Wedbush Morgan. "The silver lining in the cloudy forecast is that nothing is likely to decline forever."
Overall, retail sales of game products fell to $5.01 billion last month from $5.55 billion in December 2009. For the full year, sales dropped 6 percent to $18.58 billion from $19.7 billion in 2009.
Those sales totals don't include PC games or gaming PCs. Nor do they include digitally downloaded games, game subscriptions, in-game advertising, virtual goods bought in Facebook games or mobile games.
NPD estimates that revenue from such products totaled about $6 billion last year. Had that amount been factored into total industry sales, its
revenue would have declined by about 2 percent from 2009.The game business's December revenue decline was led by a steep drop in sales of game machines. Retailers sold $1.84 billion worth of consoles and handheld players last month, down 16 percent from December 2009. For the year, sales of game devices fell 13 percent to $6.29 billion.
All of the major game devices posted year-over-year sales drops last month except Microsoft's Xbox 360. But much of the revenue decline can be blamed on the waning popularity of Nintendo's Wii.
Consumers purchased 2.36 million Wiis in December. That made it the top console for the first time in many months. But the number of Wiis sold was down 38 percent from the previous December.
Sony's PlayStation 3 likewise saw a sizable sales drop. Consumers purchased 1.2 million PlayStation 3s last month, down 11 percent from the same month a year earlier.
Meanwhile, consumers bought 1.87 million Xbox 360s last month, which was up 42 percent from December 2009.
Game software sales also dropped steeply last month, falling 8 percent to $2.37 billion. Including PC games, total game sales came in at $2.53 billion, which was down 5 percent from the same period a year ago.
Pachter blamed the decline on a lack of top-notch new game releases and tough comparisons with particular games or game categories that did well the year before. Sales of music games, for example, fell from $225 million in December 2009 to $70 million last month, he noted.
The only bright spot for the game industry was sales of accessories. Last fall, Microsoft and Sony released new motion-sensing add-ons for their game systems that have proved to be hits. Microsoft shipped 8 million units of its new Kinect accessory in its first two months on the market.
Accessory sales grew 10 percent in December to $853.2 million. For the year, they were up 13 percent to $2.93 billion.
Because NPD's data do not include the industry's newer sources of revenue, they don't really capture how the game business is changing, analysts noted. Social gaming, mobile games and other new products are growing quickly and transforming the industry.
"People are gaming differently and spending money differently," said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with M2 Research, a consulting firm that focuses on the game industry.
Despite the ongoing downturn in game sales, analysts are optimistic that the industry will see a turnaround in 2011.
"There may be a rainbow at the end of the storm that began in 2009," Pachter said. "A bad end to 2010 positions the industry for a rebound, and product introductions and price cuts should be sufficient to ensure solid growth."
Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-920-5021. Follow him at Twitter.com/troywolv.video game industry Blasted!Retail sales of game products fell in 2010 for the second year in a row.Hardware crushed: Sales of game consoles and handheld game machines fell 13 percent from 2009 to $6.3 billion. Software stymied: Game software sales dropped 6 percent to $9.4 billion. Music game sales in December fell 69 percent to $70 million.Accessories moving, but not enough: Accessory sales rose 13 percent to $2.9 billion. Microsoft shipped 8 million Kinect units in 60 days.Source: NPD GroupKeeping scoreNintendo's Wii2.36 million
sold in December,-38%
from Dec. '09Sony's PlayStation 31.2 million
sold in December, -11%
from Dec. '09Microsoft's Xbox 3601.87 million
sold in December, +42%
from Dec. '09
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