End of Internet Explorer era spells trouble for Japan businesses

Japan may be the country most affected by the move to mothball IE, as a survey in March found that 49% of companies in the Asian nation still use the long-tenured browser. — Reuters

Microsoft Corp is finally retiring its Internet Explorer on June 15, putting an end to a quarter-century-old app while also sparking a small panic among businesses and government agencies that built internal systems around the unpopular browser.

Japan may be the country most affected by the move, as a survey in March found that 49% of companies in the Asian nation still use IE. Among them, the most common use was for in-house management, data exchange and accounting systems. All of those should have been updated or transitioned to different software in the time since Microsoft announced its IE retirement plans a year ago, but the Nikkei reports that many procrastinated.