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First of all, I don't recognize NetApplications data as being an accurate reflection of global market share. In the recent past, their data has proven to be more reflective of the North American region rather than the globe (eg. until recently, they were claiming that OSX had 10% of global market share, when sales data showed global usage of OSX had never surpassed 4%). And they only monitor data from 40,000 sites...while StatCounter monitors over 3,000,000 sites around the world.

You said this -

"If you now look at the numbers above and map them to the PC purchase data, one will find that majority of the reduction from IE to Safari is due to migration from Windows to Linux (Micr to Appl). And ofcourse I don't dispute your point that IE has been losing share to GC - my point was FF needs to be more worried about GC than does IE. This is because for a new user, the most preferred browser is the pre-installed one (IE or Safari). For more evolved users like you and me, when we know the limitations of a browser, we switch to a better one. For example, I prefer the FF over IE and GC."

Migration from Windows to Linux?? OSX is officially a version of Unix....Linux is classified as being a Unix-like OS. Unix is not Linux. You say FF needs to be more worried about migration to Chrome than IE does..and then you say that this is because IE benefits from preinstallation and user ignorance of the alternatives as new PC users enter the PC market. What you failed to realize is that those factors have been playing a role for years, yet migration away from IE has pretty much been constant the whole time. In other words, people around the globe are migrating away from IE faster than new, clueless users are buying their first PCs and sticking with the default option, IE. For instance, if you look at usage data from the African continent, you'll see that, like other places, Africans, who are among some of the newest PC users out there, are switching away from IE too. If you look at Asia, where most of the newest PC users actually come from these days, you'll see that the overall market is also migrating away from IE, even though new PC purchases are driving the adoption of IE8.

Then you said this -

"And the number of new users offsets the number of evolved ones by a substantial number. This is the underlying reason for the projected continued domination of IE - unless ofcourse Google launches its Chrome OS in the near future - only then would I consider it a considerable threat."

That's not at all accurate. You're oversimplifying this. The major reasons for IE's continued dominance on PCs over the years are -
1 - Many corporations still rely heavily on it
2 - China

You have to remember that browser usage data is a combination of corporate usage and consumer usage data. You're treating the data as if it represents consumer usage only. Secondly, you have to take China into account. China accounts for more than 20% of all Internet users around the globe and IE has held on to 90% of their market because that market is not migrating away from it like the rest of the world is. China represents a substantial reserve of IE users - probably accounting for nearly a third of all IE users on the planet. If Internet browsing habits there were to ever evolve away from IE dependence, IE's global market share would drop like a rock.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm#asia

The big problem with how you're analyzing the browser situation is that you're not taking into account the fact that traditional PCs will play a increasingly minor role in how people access the Internet in the future. The future is mobile access through a variety of form factors, with smartphones and tablets projected to dominate. And that's the biggest threat to IE and Microsoft's position as a major consumer brand out there. If you look at the Internet usage data and compare access via mobile devices vs access via PCs, you'll see that mobile device usage has been accelerating. In January 2009, mobile accounted for 0.65% of Internet traffic. At the start of 2010, mobile accounted for 1.5% of Internet traffic. In the last month, it accounted for 3.94% of all Internet traffic. If I were you, I wouldn't read too much into IE9's chances, because the traditional desktop PC market is about to become less relevant to the average consumer in the coming years.

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