Microsoft continues an aggressive campaign to get Windows 10 users to use its default web browser. The latest ploy is popup tips pointing out that Edge is safer and faster than Chrome. This really needs to be effective if Microsoft wants to maintain a share of the browser market.

The end of the first month of 2017 seems a reasonable point to do a stock take and things look pretty bleak from Microsoft's point of view. With Windows 10 now accounting for almost 30% of Windows installations you might expect Edge to have made inroads into the browser landscape, instead it has a 5% share.

The latest statistics from Net Applications show that Internet Explorer reveal that combining Edge and Internet Explorer Microsoft has just 25% of the desktop browser market, while Chrome has increased its share to 58%.

(click in chart to enlarge)

The really depressing message from these statistics is that although Windows 10 continues to attract users at a reasonable rate, see chart below, Edge hardly sees an increase month on month. Meanwhile Internet Explorer loses it users, which is hardly surprising in view of the fact that Microsoft stopped supporting all versions apart for IE 11 in January 2016.

(click in chart to enlarge)

Back in September 2015 when we asked How Is Edge Doing? our conclusion about its poor take up was:

It does look as though users who are sophisticated enough to make an active choice of browser are ditching Edge in preference for Chrome. 

This obviously continues to be the case and nagging on the part of Microsoft may even be harmful, alienating Windows 10 users so that the sophisticated user thinks about moving away from Windows and Microsoft altogether.

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