Week in Numbers: Browser wars continue

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This week in the glorious land of IT, browser wars continued unabated, Yahoo displays its bill fending off Microsoft, and PC shipments are predicted to fall at record rates - they'd be making Great Depression references, if only computers were around then...

10.91 per cent – the share of the browser market that Apple now holds, after the Safari 4 beta got off to a fast start. Internet Explorer still leads with 68 per cent, followed by Mozilla’s Firefox, at a shade under 22 per cent.

20 per cent – the drop in users a web site sees if it adds a half second to its load time, according to Google. Hopefully this page loaded quickly for you, then.

115 – the number of flaws Firefox reported last year, compared to IE’s 31. On the upside, at least Mozilla fixes them quickly, taking just 43 days to offer a solution, compared to Microsoft’s 100 days.

$79 million – the cash spent by Yahoo defending itself against Microsoft’s takeover bid last year. Who would have thought saying “no” was so expensive?

257 million – the number of PC units that will be shipped this year. That might sound like a lot, but it’s down nearly 12 per cent since last year, according to Gartner, which said it's the largest ever recorded decline for the market. Doesn’t sound so good now, does it?

$1 billion – the price tag on an outsourcing deal between Aviva and EDS. While it is indeed a large amount of cash to lay out in a recession, the cost covers ten years. We're guessing they're not paying up front, either.

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