IE was in the 95%+ market share at one point after having crushed Netscape. Now it's in a downward trend. Considering that other than the European market, every copy of Windows still ships with IE installed, it says that people are taking the time and effort to locate and install alternate browsers. When a third of your customers have voted with their feet, it suggests you have a serious issue.
My not so humble opinion is that Microsoft is going to have do a major overhaul to IE to reverse this trend. IE 9 may be the answer but going by what I've seen of the platform demos, it's not likely. IE9, according to Microsoft, will not install on Windows XP which hurts it in the corporate market where XP is still the OS of choice.
OTOH, I use IE. I also use Chrome, Firefox, Opera and even Lynx (mostly for web page testing for visually impaired users without needing to install a screen reader/web browser). Safari, I've tried but don't use all that often.
Now if the slightly less intelligent than a half-witted watermelon people who maintain our web pages would get themselves into the 21st century, I could drop IE for 90% of my current uses. "We've always done it that way" is not an acceptable answer for continuing bad habits.
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