BROWSER USE STATISTICS
The web browser market has changed significantly over the last few years. ClarityWEB took an up-to-date look at the most popular browsers in April 2009 and debates the impact that Microsofts latest incarnation of Internet Explorer may have...
To begin with, let's take a summary of the web browser market. As of today, this is the breakdown of market share for the major players online:
1. Firefox - 46.5%
2. Internet Explorer - 43.3%
3. Google Chrome - 4.2%
4. Safari - 3.1%
5. Opera - 2.3%
Between them, the Big 5 leave a mere 0.5% of the market unaccounted for. However, the big news as of April 2009 is the marginal lead taken by Mozilla Firefox. The fact is that Firefox took top spot in January and shows no signs of giving it up.
But, and it's a big but, Internet Explorer 8 has already captured 1.4% of the market - doubling it's share between February and March 2009 (officially released on 19 March 2009 after a long beta period). Received to largely rave reviews, IE8 looks like the fillet Microsoft has been in need of. Its strict adherence to standards looks almost certain to restore Microsoft to the top of the browser charts.
The breakdown of the 43.3% share that IE already holds is as follows:
1. IE7 - 24.9%
2. IE6 - 17.0%
3. IE8 - 1.4%
We'd expect to see IE8 at the top of the list within the next 6 months - and that isn't brilliant news for Google. Whilst Chrome has seen a steady rise in users, it did hit the scene with a good few bugs - and that lost it a good few users. Indeed, in 2009 it has increased it's market share by a mere 0.3%. We've been disappointed by what is a featured packed browser let down by some very annoying faults - and plenty of them are still there.
That'll please Apple. The ongoing popularity of Macs in the home has seen Safari rise month on month. The market share it enjoys may be meagre in comparison to the PC-dominated arena, but it has stll doubled since mid-2007.
We're not sure where Opera is going. It hasn't moved a great deal of late and we still don't think they do enough in promoting it. It's fast, incredibly robust, and, well, little known outside of web and IT circles.
So, for now, it's all about waiting for Firefox 4 in 2010...
Browser Breakdowns
A more detailed breakdown of version use across the main browsers:
See left for IE breakdown.
Firefox
1. FF3.0 - 42.4%
2. FF2.0 - 3.0%
3. FF1.0 - 1.3%
Google Chrome
1. Chrome 1.0 - 3.9%
2. Chrome 2.0 - 0.2%
3. Chrome Beta - 0.1%
Opera
1. O9.5 - 1.9%
2. O9.0 - 0.2%
3. O10 - 0.1%
4. O8.0 - 0.1%
Unfortunately, the figures for Apples Safari aren't available to us at this time.
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