Chrome, Safari chip at IE web share in July
updated 03:45 pm EDT, Wed August 5, 2009
Net App Browser Share July
Internet Explorer's share of the web browser market has dropped to its lowest point in recent memory thanks to inroads from Apple and Google, new stats from Net Applications show. The web tracking firm says Microsoft's browser now has 67.68 percent of the market, lower than a previous low in April. Most of the losses came from both Chrome and Safari, which themselves reached all-time highs of 2.59 percent and 4.07 percent respectively.
In spite of the formal release of Firefox 3.5, the Mozilla-made browser's market share for all Firefox versions was near-flat from month to month at 22.47 percent. Opera ultimately declined slightly to 1.97 percent, while unusually the now defunct Netscape climbed to 0.67 percent.
Microsoft's decline isn't directly explained but is helped by wider distribution of Safari 4 and more active marketing for Chrome on Google's own websites. Both browsers stress compatibility and raw speed while Internet Explorer 8 is regularly the slowest and least accurate modern browser. Firefox recently closed most, but not all, of the performance gap but focuses on customization first.
Web browser market share, July 2009
Safari disappoints
08/05, 04:55pm reply
I loved the Safari 4 beta. It was fast, It was lean. The production release is slow. Way too slow. I switched to Firefox, which is much faster on the Macbook, Mac Mini and the Windows PC at work.
pastusza
Forum Regular
Joined: Nov 1999
sad...
08/05, 05:08pm reply
.67% still using netscape?
And Chrome's only been out for 6 months, only available for Windows, is more than halfway to catching Safari.
Maybe if Apple changed their iTunes update software on Windows to not only download safari even though you don't even have it or want it, but also change your default browser and uninstall all the competition...
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
Net Apps Changed Method
08/06, 10:01am reply
Net Applications retroactively changed their statistics. Basically, before, their statistics were just raw percentages of all traffic, and now, they're attempting to show percentage of browser share per person, rather than per unit of traffic. They say they did this because "some countries were growing traffic at a much higher pace than the rest of the world and it was creating unacceptable variances in the share numbers."
Because the U.S. has a lot of traffic per user, and a lot of Mac users, this is to the detriment of the Mac and Safari. Because China has less traffic per user, but a lot of users, and a lot of users running on old copies of Windows XP, XP and Explorer 6 are greatly inflated.
So what they are measuring has really changed. If you want to find out what the statistics are for the U.S./U.K. alone? That costs $500.
beepy
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2001
Re: Net apps changed
08/06, 10:09am (1 reply) reply
So, are you saying that Safari's numbers, even though they did grow, should have grown a lot more?
And there's nothing wrong with their change. It's actually makes the stats more correct. They're trying to tell you what percentage of people are using what browser, not "How many times is some browser hitting the network".
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001