I’m not sure whether this is the right phrase but do consumers have a bad case of “upgrade fatigue” when it comes to Microsoft software? Look at Internet Explorer, which has seen its market share decline to about 80% in the U.S. while Firefox has climbed to 14%, according to WebSideStory and Net Applications. This is despite the fact IE7 has Firefox-ized itself by adding such as tabs so you can open multiple Web sites at the same time. Are people moving to Firefox because it’s better and/or cooler, or are they simply tired of IE?
While there’s no Firefox in the operating system world (sorry, Mac and Linux supporters), there doesn’t seem be much buzz about Vista’s impending launch. While I haven’t drilled down into Vista yet, there appears to nothing compelling that will drive XP users to buy Vista. And what about Office 2007? How many people really need a new version of Word or PowerPoint when Office 2003 will do pretty much everything and anything you need.
Of course, millions of computer users will happily upgrade to IE7, Vista and Office 2007, while people buying new computers will have no choice. That said, IE7’s battle against Firefox puts the focus on the upgrade cycle and how difficult it can be to migrate people to new versions at a time when interesting competitors are battling for the attention of consumers.
9 Comments
Long live Firefox!!!!!
I agree with your statement. People are just tired of IE (and microsoft in general). There actually seem to be a significant upward trend for Safari and the mac OS as well.
It is interesting how people don’t talk much about Opera these days. I used to be an avid user until FF came along.
I am a browser whore. I primarily use OmniWeb with Hicksdesign’s theme installed, but also flirt regularly with Firefox, Safari, Opera and WebKit.
It seems a lot of decisions are made based on ubiquity. With MS& IE on almost every office desktop, people want it at home becasue it is familiar, regardless of being problematic. Having a monopoly doesn’t mean you have a good product – just good marketing/bullying/corporate leasing programs.
I have both IE7 and FireFox installed. And I’ve gotta admit that, after almost a decade of using IE, I now have FireFox as my default browser. I’m a nontechnical person. And I find that the abundance of plug ins with their darned simple installation augments the usefulness of FireFox way over IE7.
Sorry Microsoft.
I’m also a big Firefox fan, and have been very happily using it for the last few years. I’m with Joe on the plugins too. nice to see that one of the first plugins I ever had to use is now becoming less and less necessary – the “launch this page in IE” widget. People are increasingly coding their stuff to support both IE and FF, which is good. I’ve even seen a bunch of sites and apps coming out that default to supporting FF first, promising to support IE when they can get to it. Interesting shift.
Your bigger point, however, is a really important one. Upgrade fatigue is far from new – we’ve had it since DOS 3.11 or even before – but it’s becoming an increasingly vicious circle.
Developers are driven by competition, by management, by lack of marketing aforethought, by all sorts of questionably valid internal and external pressures to keep pumping out new features, new versions, new bloatware.
Meanwhile, there is a very strong clear trend among “consumer” users, the SOHO market and even, increasingly, the large corporations to skip upgrades, or even just fix on a particular standardised, relatively stable desktop environment and stop upgrading all together. There are very good economic reasons for doing this, if you’re the customer. The “hidden” costs of upgrade after upgrade after upgrade can be terribly painful.
I tend to push one of my laptops to the edge with relatively frequent upgrades and updates. It’s the one machine I might be tempted to Vista-ize, if I have the time and the energy. The main home machines – used by my family “user community” – have been stable on WinXP with Office ‘03 and Firefox 1.5 for a good while now, and I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to upgrade.
Why would I want to increase my support burden, destabilize, and force my “users” to learn a bunch of new stuff of only marginal incremental value to them?
Wherre this becomes a vicious circle, of course, is that my behaviour is far from unusual. With so many people choosing to sit back and resist the allure of the latest fancypants “must have” upgrades, software vendors face lower-than-expected revenues from their latest “game changing” new version. This, in turn, drives them to be even more manically focused on pushing the next upgrade out the door, and so the cycle repeats.
I could go on and on about this, but….um… I think I already did.
I’m being increasingly pressured to use Firefox as well, not only because of its pop-up blockers, but also its apparently greater immunity to viruses and trojan horses (or so I am told by others more computer savvy than I).
I’ve noticed that the new upgrade of IE is greatly improved and has adopted many of the Firefox features. Will it be enough to save Microsoft’s near monopoly on nearly everything computer related? Probably not, as most consumers like a variety of products from different sources, or at least the appearance of it (which is why many parent companies retain divisions over take-overs, even when they appear to compete).
I find it a combination of both people tired of Microsoft products ruling the computing lives and the lack of adequate standardization of Microsoft products. Firefox is very good at sticking with the W3C specifications, they render items as you think they should (which is why web developers like myself love it) and has a very active development community where you can learn on how to make the browser your own.
For years Microsoft has always fought against organizations for standardizing anything. They still insist on “leading” the industry with their own ideas rather than perhaps working with other groups. Only now is Microsoft even taking a look at what the W3C has been saying since it is losing market share.
If you don’t believe me, open up any HTML 4 book and look at how Microsoft and IE have their own tags for everything and the bugs in most of it. Developers are tired of having to basically create two versions of a site to get around all the bugs of IE (and very few from FF).
They rather go with what works.
Mark, thanks for the post. I ran with it in a different vein from the topic at hand and pursued your question of whether or not it’s worth it to upgrade to Office 2007. I’ve been nothing but pleased with the new Office Suite. I’ll also say that I’ve now switched back to IE with their release of IE7. I had moved to Firefox for the tabs and really got attached to the exensibility of Firefox with simple installation of extensions. IE7 still hasn’t nailed this with their Add-on’s feature. However I still use IE7, I just like the interface better than Firefox, but really miss the extensions.
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[...] If anyone had any doubts about the iPod’s staying power, Apple’s fiscal first-quarter results suggests there no lack of demand for the world’s coolest MP3 player. In the quarter ended Dec. 30, Apple sold a 21 million iPods – an impressive 50% increase over the same period a year earlier. The iPod’s ability to maintain its momentum indicates the MP3 player market still has plenty of room for growth, and that Apple’s drive to pump out new versions of the iPod have resonated with consumers. It’s an interesting contrast to a post I wrote yesterday on upgrade fatigue when it comes to products such as Internet Explorer and Office. Apple’s ability to drive higher iPod sales also reflects how competitors are failed to make any serious inroads even though there are products as good or better than the iPod. The iPod has achieved what I like to call “default status” so when people think about buying an MP3 player, they think about an iPod – much like they think about a Blackberry when it comes to a mobile e-mail device. For something, well, completely different on Apple, check out the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. [...]
[...] That’s the question being asked by Mark Evans in a recent post about Firefox gaining more of the browser market share wars. From what you’ve seen of Office 2007, is it worth upgrading to you? It sure is for me, I like the new interface more and more every minute I use it. It just makes sense. [...]