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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul K who wrote (22892)	5/19/1999 9:25:00 AM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

PaulK and All: Browser Wars: Just in cast the address is no longer valid here is an excerpt from the article. The hidden message here is that in an open competition without price as a determining factor the public is choosing IE5.0. Not because it is imbedded but because it is easy to install. I suppose the judge would have MSFT make it difficult. IE5.0 is a great browser and as the fellow below says MSFT is the only company with an end to end solution. On top of this it appears that the consumer is benefitted and not harmed. JFD IE Pulls Ahead Zona study finds IE beats Navigator 3 to 2 in corporations. by Christian McIntosh, PC World May 18, 1999, 4:54 p.m. PT Despite Netscape's best efforts, Microsoft's methodical push for Web browser market dominance continues unabated. Netscape's longstanding hold on the corporate browser market is eroding, according to a study released by Zona Research on Tuesday. Citing figures from April 1999, Zona's study reveals 59 percent of corporate respondents use Microsoft's Internet Explorer as their primary browser, compared to 41 percent who favor Netscape Navigator. Zona surveyed 308 companies. Zona's findings sharply contrast with the company's prior browser survey, in October 1998, which showed Navigator outdistancing IE by 20 percent. IE as Company Policy Contributing to IE's enterprise rise is a spike in corporate browser policies. Companies that either encourage or require employees to use a particular browser have increased from 33 percent in 1996 to 69 percent in 1999. Of the companies with such policies, 62 percent identified IE as a standard while only 38 percent specified Navigator or Communicator. "The desktop browser has long ceased being a personal choice," says Clay Ryder, vice president and chief analyst for Zona Research. While Zona attributed company policy as the predominant force behind IE's rise, other factors drove the shift from Navigator to IE. "Since Internet Explorer is such an integral part of Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0, it's very easy to install and you don't have to go to another vendor for support," Ryder says. Plus, Microsoft has ported its operating system to most of the key non-Windows platforms such as Sun Solaris, HP UX, and Macintosh, Ryder adds. "The standardization issues have been neutralized," he says. "It evens the playing field for something that was a major advantage for Navigator." Ryder also notes that IE is still not available for some platforms, such as Linux. Steady Spread of Influence Microsoft's dominance in the enterprise browser market segment mirrors its penetration in other channels of the corporate environment, says Harley Manning, research director with Forrester Research. Starting with Site Server, Microsoft has successfully introduced solutions to every tier of company infrastructure. "They are the only company that has real end-to-end solution," Manning adds. "They already have this well-greased chute." And Zona is not the only market research firm to crown IE the browser king. "Over the last eight months, we've seen a steady increase of corporate Internet Explorer users," says Ann Stephens, president of the market research firm PC Data. For the month of April, PC Data found that 62 percent of businesses surveyed use Internet Explorer while only 38 percent use Netscape Navigator.