Slow, but steady usage share growth in IE8's first day

The early numbers from Web analytics firm NetApplications indicate a slower than expected, but steady uptick in usage share for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, a product which was introduced at noon yesterday on the East Coast. It's not being pushed as an update to the Windows operating system, so trading up for now is still a voluntary affair for users.

Still, if NetApplications' numbers are accurate -- based on the browser traffic it receives from Web sites it analyzes professionally, compared against the Web as a whole -- about as many new users have tried IE8 a day after launch as tried Google Chrome the day after its launch. Worldwide usage share as of 3:00 pm EDT was pegged at 1.90% and climbing. That's just slightly ahead of Google's initial uptick the day after it was launched, according to the firm's numbers.

But Chrome's numbers never really climbed much after that first day; in fact they subsided. Still today, Chrome's usage share stands at 1.15%, indicating that many users were interested in the novelty of the browser, but not enough to test it for very long. IE8's users, by contrast, are likely to be full-time adopters; so the success of Microsoft's initial promotion may be gauged not by how much these numbers taper off, but by whether they grow linearly or incrementally.

Overall, Internet Explorer's usage share for all versions combined stands at over two thirds of the world's browsers -- this after enjoying three-fourths of the world's traffic at this time last year. Mozilla Firefox browsers account for nearly 22% of traffic, while the success of the iPhone and Macs have rocketed Safari to the world's #3 position at just over 8%.