Here’s the real Zona Research numbers from that Macweek article I mentioned Friday. First off, it’s “Browsers Most Used at Work,” not “Browsers Corporate Sites Prefer.” A little different, ya think? Here’s a comparison between the April numbers used in the article, and the most current October figures.

April '99  October '99
MSIE 3          3%             1%
MSIE 4         49             20
MSIE 5          7             44
NN/C 3          4              0
NN/C 4         34             29
NN/C 5          3              6
MSIE Total     59             65
NN/C Total     41             35

Now personally, I think that the NN5 numbers are bunk. I don’t buy that 6% of any company’s personnel are, most of the time, using a browser that’s not even in beta. Either way, though, it shows that IE market share is gaining at least 1% per month. And if instead of “Browsers Most Used at Work,” they’d picked Zona’s survey of “Browsers chosen as Corporate Standard,” the numbers would have been even more obvious:

April '99  October '99  StatMarket
MSIE 3          3%             2%         2.7%
MSIE 4         57             36         36.2
MSIE 5          2             31         37.5
NN/C 3          4              0          2.2
NN/C 4         31             27         19.7
NN/C 5          3              4          0.3
MSIE Total     62             69         77.0
NN/C Total     38             31         22.2

Again, IE use is growing by at least 1% per month. The numbers on the far right are from StatMarket, and are the ones that I think actually have some basis in reality. If Netscape meets its February beta date (unlikely, as it hasn’t met a date yet), it’ll have less than 20-25% market share by then. And by the time the final ships, who knows? Of course, if AOL pushes NN5 to all of its subscribers, the stats could change overnight.