Regular readers will know that I keep my eye out for Mozilla-related news on the web and often link to the stories and blog posts that I find. Today, while mucking about in the various search tools I frequent for Mozilla-related news, I ran acorss a number of articles and blogs discussing Safari's doubling market share since February
What does that mean and what's the total potential maket there?
Jobs says there are 7 million OS X users. I thought it would be nice to try to find some data that backed that up. According to published reports, Apple has been between 2 and 2.5% of global PC sales for the last few years (more on this at Google.) There have been about 120 million PCs sold each year for the last few years. If few of the Apple sales were upgrades of machines already running OS X then it's quite possible that there are 7 million OS X users out there - so Jobs may not be wildly off-base.
If oneStat (which says Safari has 0.25% of the browser market) and Global Reach (which says there are 620 million intenet users) are to be belived, then Safari has about 1.55 million total users today.
What about Mozilla/Camino/Firebird on Mac OS X? I really don't know. This paragraph is wild speculation based on shakey numbers :-) Roughly 10% of Mozilla downloads (seamonkey+camino+firebird) are for OS X. If Mozilla's has 1.6% of the total internet market (according to oneStat) then roughly .16% of the intenet should be using OS X Mozilla. That would be about 1 million Mac OS X Mozilla users (based on the Global Reach number).
So what does this mean for OS X as a browser market? If Safari is 1.5 million users strong and Mozilla/Camino/Firebird is 1 million, that leaves 4.5 million Mac OS X machines out there that are still up for grabs.
If users realize that there's something better and can be enticed to take the plunge and download a better browser, there is definitely room to grow, for both Safari and Mozilla/Camino/Firebird, in the OS X installed base.
I personally can't stand IE on Mac OS X and I'm sure that, as the word spreads about Safari and Camino/Mozilla/Firebird, more and more users are going to want to upgrade to a more capable application. While it's not a huge block of users (just under 1% of today's total intenet population if the relevant above numbers are legit) I think it's one that's worth going after.
Tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, faster page rendering, faster downloading, better support for the standards and the real-world web - the reasons to get off of IE are abundant.
Oh, I almost forgot; the market share growth statistic from all those "Safari doubles market share" stories, when mapped against actual users gained, is roughly 1/3rd of the user growth that Mozilla had in the same period. Still, quite impressive for a product that only recently came out of beta.
note: I suck at math and I've got a reputation for unrealistic predictions and wild, unfounded speculation. On top of that, I only use OS X about three days a week so pretty much everything I just said is probably rubbish.
Posted by asa at July 31, 2003 08:34 PMWell, even if its rubbish, its damn good rubbish that's got me thinking.
Posted by: Jasmeet on August 1, 2003 12:30 AMI think Apple want to make Safari the default browser in OSX 10.3, so soon all new Macs will use it by default, instead of IE. That will help boost its market share. Hopefully then these so called web 'designers' will wake up and smell the web standards coffee.
Posted by: Neil T. on August 1, 2003 12:30 AMAs much as I would love to think that Mozilla would get 100% market share here... being the default has advantages.
It is a shame... Apple should support Firebird. There really isn't room for more than two browsers and Safari isn't OSS.
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Burton on August 1, 2003 02:09 AM@Kevin Burton: Safari is based in Konquerors KHTML engine, which is OSS. Apple gives code back to the KDE projekt as well. IIRC Apple wanted a browser engine for iTunes Music Store as well, to display all the visual stuff and text, and they wanted their own baby.
Posted by: adaxl on August 1, 2003 03:49 AMWhat's the third browser on OS X? There's Safari, Mozilla/Mozilla Firebird/Camino and...? I'm not couting Mac IE, because MS isn't supporting it anymore. IIRC, Opera doesn't make and OS X version. Is there something else that I'm missing?
Personally, as soon as I heard that Apple was making Safari, I figured that the browser battle on OS X had been won. Just go back to when MS released Win98 with IE4 integrated into the OS. That pretty much killed the competition right there, so sadly it sure looks like the same thing is going to happen again, this time on OS X.
Posted by: milbertus on August 1, 2003 03:50 AMAn important feature Camino Needs, and Mac are only looking for a decent browser (they already have descent Mail and Newgroup applications), is to be upgradeable from within the OS. People need to be able to use software updates to upgrade from one version of camino to the other.
On the same subject I've started a little thread at MacNN : http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170190
I'm sure that the same questioin posted in comp.*mac* news groups would bring pretty much the same issues.
Youo can alosr read the following thread to have a more Mac oriented point of view :
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170580
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170017
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170414
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170381
and finally : http://birdhouse.org/blog/archives/000964.php
Posted by: Ludovic Hirlimann on August 1, 2003 06:10 AMmilbertus: There are some other, smaller (market share wise) browsers for OS X that people tend to use. They include apps like OmniWeb and iCab.
Posted by: Bryan Samis on August 1, 2003 08:55 AMAsa, your right on!
Remember IE is becoming unsupported. No more updates. Meaning it's up to Mozilla and Safari to be the primary browsers.
Posted by: Robert Accettura on August 1, 2003 09:06 AMActually, I don't think IE 4 won the market. IE was so far behind Netscape that it took several "integrations" with the browser before it became the standard on Windows desktops. Really, IE4 was so bad, IIRC it took Win98SE and IE5 for NS to see serious market share erosion.
Posted by: Tsee on August 1, 2003 09:20 AMSo what's the conclusion?
Put more effort into making nice slick Mac products! Currently the mac efforts in Camino and Firebird seem to be moving very slowly.
Posted by: Jeff on August 1, 2003 12:40 PMAsa, one more thing to keep in mind is how to get your target audience. Mac users go bonkers over things that look pretty and have good UIs. While Mozilla certainly isn't bad, and Firebird is an improvement, neither can really impress compared to Camino or Safari. Firebird for PC is great, but it's just plain ugly on OS X. What you need to start doing is shipping default themes for the OS X browsers that use native widgets and have the OS X "feel" to them, or else nobody except the most hardcore will use them. That's why most of my friends use Safari/Camino over Mozilla - it has nothing to do with performance or anything like that, pure aesthetics.
You may want to have a look at the excellent "Pinstripe" theme for Mozilla on OS X (http://www.kmgerich.com/pinstripe/pinstripe.html) - it is perhaps one of the best themes I've ever installed, and makes using Mozilla on a Mac much more enjoyable. Perhaps you should ship something like that as the Moz OS X default theme?
Posted by: Bryan on August 2, 2003 06:09 AMIE4 was very good, and I have no doubt that IE4 was what caused the defeat of Netscape, because it was the browser that persuaded me to switch.
If nothing else, Netscape felt clunky. It was clunky. I thought it was terrible, and I came to really like IE 4.
IE 3 was awful. IE 4 was a transformation.
Posted by: Shaeym on August 25, 2003 01:11 PM