James, that is an interesting perspective on IE9 leading the comeback; it's possible, but I think that is a low percentage play.
My reasoning is thus:
<>MS is having trouble getting people onboard their new mobile platform, and is loosing market-share, mind-share, and momentum to Google.
<>MS has had years to dominate tablets, and they have missed badly in the past.
<>At the same time Google is turning circles (development cycle times) inside of Microsoft, doing things like releasing a free tool that enables office tools upload to the Google cloud
<>HP has made their choice, and having bought Palm, the Palm/Hp webOS will soon be on all HP hardware.
<>Shortform, there are lots of options available, and more coming that give people MS alternatives.
<>With persistent (to increasing) financial challenges in the larger market, SMBs in particular are price sensitive, and passing on MS Office, or upgrading hardware.
James we should come up with a friendly wager, and pick a time to compare this month browser market-share stats with 6 or 12 months from now.
My prognostication is that IE marketsahre will continue errode.
FYI - you can always run XP inside of a VM on an Ubu desktop.
