News about Microsoft, and especially Internet Explorer, seems to follow a pattern. We get one good report, only to be followed by a negative one.

Case in point: this morning I wrote about the solid numbers for Internet Explorer 9  when it came to downloads, but now we get a report, via Network World that Microsoft’s browser is losing influence all because of the rise of web applications.

According to a report published by Zscaler, a cloud based web and email filtering service, IE usage dropped in 2010 from 76.6% to 64.75%. At the same time Firefox dropped from 9.62% to 8.74%. The only browsers to see a gain were Safari and Chrome which gained 1.5% and 1% respectively.

The study is the security vendor’s annual analysis of patterns associated with millions of Web-based transactions from many thousands of individuals using the Zscaler security-as-a-service cloud each day.

“IE dropped by 11% to 12%, so you would have expected another browser to gain that,” says Michael Sutton, Zscaler’s vice president of security research. But instead, corporate employees using Zscaler’s cloud-based Web and e-mail filtering service are showing a growing preference for third-party applications, probably because “they get a more rich user experience” than with a browser, he notes.

via Network World

Like all numbers and studies, take these with a grain of salt because I am sure we will see someone come along and refute them.

[Cross posted at Winextra]