We're half way through the month and I'm ready to make my predictions on what Net Applications will report at the end of the month for April browser share.
This month had a holiday extended weekend for a decent chunk of the world so that's going to favor Firefox somewhat. Firefox always does better than IE on weekends and holidays and we had our best day ever with almost 26% share on Saturday, 4-11. That bodes well for April overall.
Firefox ended March at 22.05% share and I predict it will end April at 22.55% for a gain of half a point.
IE ended March at 66.82% share and I'm predicting they fall 7/10th to 66.12%.
Chrome's March share was 1.23% and I think they'll rise a full 10th of a point to 1.33%.
Safari wrapped March at 8.23% and I think we'll see them end at 8.25% for an essentially flat month.
Opera finished March at 0.70% and will finish April at 0.70% for a genuinely flat month.
Not much excitement there. Now on to some wild speculation :-)
More interesting than Firefox continuing to outpace Chrome by about 4-5x is the arrival of IE8. This time last month, IE8 left beta with 1.33% share and has already climbed to about 3.75% without Windows Update (and as best I can tell, all at the expense of IE7) and will finish the month with about 5% share. Windows Update is scheduled for the end of this month so it's going to be exciting to see where IE 8 goes and whether or not it takes a bite out of anything but IE7.
When IE7 shipped, IE 6 had about 80% of the market. After a couple of Windows Update pushes over the span of two years (first one requiring WGA, second not) IE7 was able to pull in about 45 points directly from IE6. Now we're about to witness the Windows Update with IE7 at 45% and I don't think they'll do a lot better at migrating that audience than they did the last. I expect we'll see them take roughly half of the IE7 users in the first 3 or 4 months after Windows Update. After that, I think it's going to be slower going for them.
This puts the Web in a very different position than it was just a couple of years ago. In just a few months, we're going to see IE users split across three versions, likely with IE8 and IE7 each holding about 25% and IE6 holding about 15%. Firefox will have pretty much all of its 24% on Firefox 3.0, and Safari will be trailing back around 10%.
If things go as they have in the past, by the end of this year, we're likely to see IE8 and Firefox 3.5 leading the Web with 30% and 27% respectively, IE7 and IE6 next with about 10-15 points each, and Safari+Chrome+Opera rounding out the back with a combined 10-15%
We're really coming to the end of the majority browser era, and quickly. Good times!
