December 6, 2008
market share by platform
NetApplications just released their November browser market share report so there's been a lot of talk about how the browsers are stacking up and where things are moving. I blogged some about this earlier in the week.
Clearly IE is falling, and at a pretty good clip. Does this mean that the browser wars have really heated up again with half a dozen exciting and capable browsers all duking it out for the top spot? That's sure what it sounds like if you read the tech pundits, bloggers, and journalists. The storyline that seems to be central to all the reporting and discussion of the competitive landscape is that it's totally thriving with IE releasing new versions much more frequently but still losing ground to Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and a handful of other challengers.
For a web developer, this makes perfect sense. People building web sites and web applications are looking at all the browsers hitting their properties and writing and optimizing for the top user agents they're seeing in their logs.
For bloggers, pundits, and journalists, the browser makers are pushing out new alphas and betas at such an amazing pace it feels like it's almost a daily event. Add to that the blow by blow coverage of the awesome battle for performance supremacy and Web standards support, and you've got a real hotbed of excitement.
But for regular people, I don't think any of this is registering at all. For most regular people, there are just two browsers, the one that came on their machine and Firefox.
What does this look like. Well, if you're on Windows, there's Internet Explorer (the default that came with your PC) and there's Firefox. If you're on Mac, there's Safari (the default that came with your Mac) and there's Firefox. One default and one alternative.
Data from December 2007 - November 2008 via NetApplications. Click images for larger views.
That's not exactly an exciting, vibrant, and red-hot marketplace. Now, that's a whole lot better than it was just four or five years ago when there was really only one browser and that browser was completely stagnant. But when you look at this from the viewpoint of a regular person sitting down to her computer, it's far from ideal.
Clearly there's a huge advantage to shipping with the computer as the default browser. Four years of amazing grass-roots marketing and word-of-mouth outreach, combined with a world-class product has accomplished more than anyone in the early days of Mozilla and Firefox would dare to imagine, but we're in an uphill battle because we're fighting not just against the other browsers out there today, but against the growth of the internet itself in a market where every new computer comes with a bundled browser from the OS vendor.
This is not the healthy marketplace that many imagine it to be. This is not the level playing field that 1 billion (and growing) Internet users deserve.
I don't have much more to say with this post but I wanted to re-open this discussion and see what you all think. Is it reasonable that the OS vendors dominate their platforms like this? Is one viable competitor to the OS vendors enough? Is it a vibrant, strong, and healthy environment when the tier two browsers are all fighting over the remaining one or two percent?
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
Posted by: Jonne | December 6, 2008 4:10 AM
Jonne, I could make a graph but NetApplications' measure of Linux market share puts it well under 1% of their total OS measure and with such a small sample the browser breakdown there is probably mostly meaningless.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | December 6, 2008 4:17 AM
I think it's great that IE is loosing more and more of its market share. I hope they will loose enough to revamp some of their old legacies (its quirks mode should definitely go away).
By the way, the first alpha of Opera 10 was released this weekend. Opera is a great browser. Hopefully, the fact that it finally got an auto updater will make it easier to spread it around the world. It would be great if they could take another part of IE's market share.
Posted by: TheDaniel | December 6, 2008 4:30 AM
I think the whole discussion is flawed. It doesn't exist anything like the "operating system". With "operating system" actually we mean a whole ecosystem built with several different software components that can be packaged together by the same vendor or put together taking them from different vendors. Tomorrow a software vendor could decide to ship one of those packages including among all the other things an office suite or an antivirus, a video editing software, whatever. So what?
Posted by: LorenzoC | December 6, 2008 7:12 AM
Hi,
Are those graphs from the paid NA version?
Posted by: Vygantas | December 6, 2008 7:42 AM
Vygantas, no, the data that I used for those graphs is available to anyone. It's not as easy to gather as it could be but it's not behind their paid wall.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | December 6, 2008 12:45 PM
Now, i'm a die hard firefox fan.
But... These days, the browser IS the computer. I think most people spend 90% of their time in the browser. You are making the choice when you buy the thing. I don't think you are owed a "level playing field" from any private company which makes computer operating systems. Perhaps Mozilla should start selling computers with firefox default, or create an OS.
This also seems to me kinda like complaining that your Toyota only ships with a Toyota brand alternator, gas tank, or steering wheel. It's required for the functionality of the thing. Toyota is not obligated to provide you the option of choosing a Ford alternator for your Camry, nor should they be. But if you want, after you buy the car, you can install a Ford alternator. (firefox)
Maybe if the government created the OS and shipped computers, then they should be obligated to provide a popup on first boot which says "use IE, Firefox or Safari?" But Microsoft and Apple should not be obligated to do anything but have their own software as the default.
Posted by: Ben | December 6, 2008 1:42 PM
I know we've heard it before, and to date it hasn't happened, but I'm still going to say it. I think there is a bright future for desktop Linux. Why is it brighter now than before? Because of "netbooks". These mini-laptops are hugely popular right now, way more than ever before. And Windows Vista will NOT run on these. Microsoft is claiming that Widnows 7 will be a lot more lean than Vista, but I'll believe it when I see it. Many of these netbooks come with Linux pre-installed. And like others have said in this thread, most people spend 90% of their computing time in their web browser, so destkop application compatibility is becoming less and less of an issue. I could be wrong, but I think Linux's market share is going to see some significant growth in the next few years.
Posted by: Jake Munson | December 6, 2008 2:37 PM
Great post, great comments.
However, the Toyota analogy is flawed since a computer per se is HW only and OS comes separately to your OEM vendor. And as mentioned above, browser becomes more and more the central part of your daily work so the choice of browser should be provided by OEM vendors as it's been for OS.
Conclusion: MoCo should negotiate browser options with HW vendors, incl. Nintendo 8-)
Posted by: Funtomas | December 6, 2008 3:24 PM
Jake Munson: Acer is going to release a netbook with Vista. Also, many netbooks come with XP these days.
Posted by: Dao | December 6, 2008 3:31 PM
To echo Dao's comment, Linux is not going to be making great gains on netbooks. Even if we're optimistic, and we say that Linux could make up as much as 40-50% of the netbooks, it's just not going to move the installed base in any dramatic way.
When you're going up against an installed base of over 1 billion machines that are ~90% Windows, ~9% Mac, and ~1% other, you'd have to dominate the primary segment of new computers, the full-fledged laptop, and the secondary segment, the desktop, with Linux for several years to even move things even just a couple of percentage points.
And that's just not happening. Netbooks are doing phenomenally well, making up a decent chunk of new laptop sales. About half of those appear to be shipping Linux. If those trends hold, then we could see Linux breaking out of the single digits of market share in about 10-15 years.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | December 6, 2008 6:00 PM
I ask again, why does Mozilla not auto-update people from obsolete Firefox versions? 1.0 and 1.5 are an embarrassment in 2008, and 2.0 will be soon.
It is inconsistent with your mission to create a better web to let these browsers linger around.
A post on the topic would be useful.
Posted by: Gregor J. Rothfuss | December 7, 2008 1:26 PM
Gregor, we have updated the overwhelming majority of Firefox 1.0 and 1.5 users to 2.0.x and 3.0.x. I'm happy to do a post on the topic but it would be pretty short: "We've done everything we can to update users from 1.0 and 1.5 to newer versions of Firefox and today they amount to less than one third of one percent of the entire web and only about 1.5% of the 200+ million Firefox users. This is a substantially better record of updating than every single other browser vendor."
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | December 7, 2008 2:55 PM
Gregor, some people just insist on sticking with an obsolete browser version - usually because they have been misinformed or simply because they don't like adapting to user interface changes. They got all the update notifications and ignored them, so what else can you do? Forcing an update without their consent is not an option. But they are really few so I don't see a problem there.
Posted by: Wladimir Palant | December 8, 2008 12:39 AM
sometimes there is also a problem, that some versions are dropped for some os. that is also a problem. o.O
Posted by: mabdul | December 8, 2008 3:29 AM
why did you left Linux browser comparison ? ;)
Posted by: Kumar | September 30, 2009 7:11 AM
Any chance we get a graph like that for Linux? Most distro's ship with Firefox as a default, so it should be interesting what the breakdown is there.