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Comment by rudiger | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know the story behind IE6's huge presence in Asia (especially China)? Why haven't they upgraded? Is it because Windows XP is still very popular? If so, why? Also, is there a popular "native-land" browser, the way Xunlei is the most popular BitTorrent client in the world?

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Piracy might be one of the reasons. But there is another possible reason - underpowered machines. Unlike the western world, owning a computer is still a luxury here (India). Most people are stuck with old machines where firefox and chrome are terribly slow.

I was expecting India to have a much higher share. But as statcounter's stats[1] suggests, chrome already has ~25% share. IE in general and IE6 in particular are losing market share drastically. This is a welcome trend.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-IN-monthly-201002-201102

What is the Indian opinion of Opera? I've run Opera 9 on 200 MHz, 64 MB machines just fine, where Firefox wouldn't cut it.

I wonder if there is a uniform "indian opinion" on Opera

While you're at it, I need the phone number for Europe.

555-387673

Are FF and later versions of IE really slower than IE6? I remember IE6 with QQ toolbar being literally unusable for me before I gave my then colleague's laptop a lease of life by upgrading her browser to IE7 (sans toolbar) for the ActiveX-dependent extensions and Firefox 3 for everything else.

Mostly I'd assume it's a function of IE-specific code in webapps and pre-XP OS installations that means that IE6 is not only required but necessary for some purposes.

This makes no sense. Both Firefox and Chrome are faster than IE6 on identical hardware.

I'm guessing that there are two factors:

1. tons of pirated intalls that can't be upgraded and 2. botnets from China that over-represent the amount actual ie6 traffic

In Korea specifically, there's a huge ActiveX site base still, especially for government and banking sites.

Some background: Korea historically required SEED for encryption, not SSL, which prevented competition in the browser market:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED

This would certainly explain the market share of IE in general, but IE 7, 8 and 9 each support ActiveX as well, so I can't imagine that alone is a factor.

I'm also guessing Maxthon[1] has a large browser share in China and you'll notice that MSIE6 is in its userstring[2], which could possibly be diluting the results for pure IE6 instead of those with the same engine (Trident[3]).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxthon

[2]: http://www.useragentstring.com/_uas_Maxthon_version_.php

[3]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(layout_engine)

Pirated doesn't mean can't be upgraded. Pirated means you can upgrade whatever you want without WGA.

I think the answer will be found in Maxthon - a very popular IE shell in China.

That's certainly one factor. I remember how annoyed I was when developing a hostel website for a friend that I'd have to support IE6, due to the wide install base. Then my friend tried using it in this weird new browser which she said was popular - I was happy that Chinese people were being persuaded to switch from IE. Then I discovered that Maxthon used the Trident layout engine and had inherited all the IE layout problems. Aaargh!

Still, I don't think Maxthon explains everything - I have seen a lot of cyber cafes with only IE6 installed. I'll try and make an extra effort to promote Chrome/Firefox/heck, even IE9 next time I'm over there.

No, the problem is Internet cafe and pubs. They contribute the largest proportion of Chinese Internet users. And they all have a very special something: 还原卡[1]. Basically it's a either software or hardware controls INT 13H, so all data write to HDD is dropped once system is reboot, and the system is as clean as a fresh system install. And yes, they all have pirated Windows XP SP2 with outdated software/games installed years ago and the admin don't bother to upgrade their system because "nothing is broken". Some of the applications defintely requires and regular upgrade, like anti-virus software and MMORPGs, often they use a network mapped drive to a LAN server. So everyone gets a latest version while the OS partition remains static for years.

IDK why 还原卡 is so popular in China, nearly every public computer has one. Perhaps it's because virus and malware are so rampant in China.

And for Maxthon, it use the system default WebBrowser control, so it's version agnostic, it can be either IE5, 5.5, 6, 7 or 8.

[1]: http://baike.baidu.com/view/905.htm

It's because of very heavy usage of ActiveX in some Asian countries

ActiveX works fine on IE7 and IE8.

I think, its because most people In India use Cyber Cafes, where you get only outdated PC's running XP (sometimes Windows 98) & IE 6.

Some workers in Cyber Cafes don't really know of FF or Chrome. They just think IE is the only way to surf internet.

I'm almost surprised they don't run old computers as thin clients/remote x terminals connected to charitable server farms running in The West.

You are kidding me right? Most of the Cyber Cafes use very powerful machine to support games like Crysis. That's why Cyber Cafes exists and popular.

But there are also cheap Cyber Cafes, which their system really sucks. People can not afford a computer go there, and they don't really care what a browser is.

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