Edunology - Saumya Aggarwal

Will it be IE9 for Microsoft?

That's a million dollar question! Undoubtely Internet Explorer 9 beta is the one of the major releases of IE since long time. With this Microsoft gave away cluttered User Interface and seems to be following route of other browsers with adherence to Web standards.

IE9 is a crucially important browser for Microsoft, and hopefully it eventually will represent the future on mobile devices, too. Microsoft needs to be as competitive, if not more, in mobile browsing as PCs. According to the U.S. State Department, 5 billion of the world's 6.6 billion people use cell phones. The total install base of PCs is about 1 billion units. Granted, the percentage of PCs capable of browsing the Web is higher than the percentage of handsets.

For now, Microsoft must recover lost territory on PCs. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer usage share was 60.4 percent in August. Before Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 in November 2004, IE commanded more than 90 percent usage share, according to combined analyst reports.

The excitement and efforts around IE9 gives encouragement. Will it be IE9 for Microsoft?