As a New Zealand Search Directory with almost entirely New Zealand traffic (close to 300,000 user sessions; see Nielsen statistics), NZS.com is in a good position to follow New Zealand Internet browser usage statistics.

With the introduction of Internet Explorer 7.0 (commonly known as IE7) in October 2006, the browser statistics on NZS.com have shown a surprisingly gradual change from IE6 to IE7.

The graph to the right shows Internet Explorer percentages over the last five months (May 2007 to September 2007), indicating that IE7 is slowly taking over from IE6 but is taking longer than many expected. With the launch of IE7 a full year ago now, as well as the increased functionality (eg. tabbed browsing) which has been introduced in IE7, there were many expectations that it would quickly surpass IE6 in usage.

A recent blog post on Microsoft’s official IEBlog shows a change this month in the way IE7 is distributed:

Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users.

With this new development, it’s likely there will be an increase in percentage uptake of IE7 over IE6. We’ll keep an eye on our statistics with interest.