Internet Explorer takes unexpected jump in market share

[Renew Deal]

Just when you thought Internet Explorer was on a years-long losing streak, about to drop below 50 percent of all browsing activity worldwide, the January figures from Net Applications showed a substantial, remarkable 1.19 percent jump in IE use in January.
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Internet Explorer's largest gain in January wasn't from IE 9 or even IE 8. By far the largest IE growth in January was from IE 6, the version that Microsoft declared dead in the United States, the one that Microsoft's been trying to pulverize for years. Between December 2011 and January 2012, according to Net Applications, IE 9's market share grew 0.16 percent, from 11.48 to 11.64 percent of the overall search market; IE 8's grew 0.11 percent; IE 7's grew 0.10 percent; and IE 6 was up 0.60 percent -- IE 6 grew almost four times as fast as any other version of IE.

Microsoft says that fewer than 1 percent of the PCs in the United States run IE 6.

So where did the big surge in Internet Explorer usage come from? Probably the place with the most PCs running IE 6: China. In December and January, more PCs were sold in China than in the United States. The vast majority of PCs sold in China don’t come with Windows pre-installed. One has to wonder how many of those PCs got fitted with pirated copies of XP, running IE 6.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/internet-explorer-takes-unexpected-jump-in-market-share-185575

[saras]

1. There's no reason to run IE6 on XP. More likely W2K and 98SE machines

W2K was/is very solid and reliable for a Windows version, especially if you didn't try to run an Internet server on it.
Likewise 98SE, although it required more work to strip it down to a reliable core. But I recently sold a piece of used computer music hardware to the tour manager for a very famous Canadian singer, who is still running studio automation on 98SE (the hardware and driver doesn't support any later versions). Because it works.

Neither OS will accept upgrades beyond IE6. So you're forced to stay with it, even if you're running the latest Firefox (which runs fine on W2K - that's what I'm doing right here)

If they get XP, they generally get IE8. It's an easy upgrade to get unofficially.