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!
Posted by: Matthew Brundage | April 17, 2009 8:33 PM
Hmm. I'm actually expecting IE6 to be borderline edge-case by Christmas and near-death by June of next year. In addition to the effect of Windows Update, there are many corporations (and government agencies) that are waiting to leapfrog over Vista when Windows 7 drops. This will exacerbate the demise of IE6, but won't effect IE7 to the same degree. So, I see a greater end-of-year disparity between IE6 and IE7.
I relish these types of posts. Keep 'em coming!
Posted by: Matthew Brundage | April 17, 2009 8:34 PM
I actually expect IE8 to do a bit of damage to Firefox's growth, as the need to install an alternative browser on a machine with IE8 is less than it was with IE7. I expect Chrome to also slow Firefox's growth once it supports extensions and is available on Mac and Linux.
Posted by: Dan | April 18, 2009 3:05 AM
I wonder what one half of one percent translates to in terms of raw internet population?
Posted by: Christopher Blizzard | April 18, 2009 8:50 AM
Microsoft is effectively splitting the IE users into three group (IE8, IE7 and IE6). This will create all sorts of trouble for web designers and tech departments. The users will also be frustrated when the various incompatibilities strike. These are great times for Firefox and Safari/Chrome. If Firefox development continues, there is a good chance that the Fox will at 30% market share by the end of the year.
Posted by: ADAXL | April 18, 2009 8:50 AM
@Blizzard, it's really hard to say, but if you assume that they are "typical" users, then it's probably close to 6 million users. But this was a volatile month in terms of total users online with many of them going offline more than a typical month so it's really hard to do that math.
@ADAXL, yeah. We're getting to the point where it no longer makes sense to talk about the share a particular vendor has. What's more valuable is the share for particular browser versions. IE 6 is not the same browser as IE 7 and IE 7 and IE 8 are also quite different. One certainly can't treat IE 6 and IE 8 as the same product from a Web developers point of view.
For Safari, they're currently split as bad or worse than IE, likely ending April with Safari 1.0 through 3.0 at 0.75%, Safari 3.1 at 2.0%, Safari 3.2 at 4.5%, and Safari 4.0 at 1.0%. What a mess. Only about half of Safari users are on the most current shipping release. A full third are on older versions, and a little better than 1 in 10 on the beta of the upcoming version.
Firefox keeps its users mostly all bunched up on the latest version. It takes us just a matter of months (not years) to migrate the overwhelming majority of our user base to the latest version. Right now, better than 90% of Firefox users are on the latest shipping version of Firefox.
@Dan, yeah, that's what they all said about IE 7, that it would slow Firefox growth because it was a good enough experience that users wouldn't switch. We've seen just the opposite. Firefox growth was actually stronger in the year after IE 7 shipped than the year before.
Oh, and start being concerned with Chrome when they're growing faster than Firefox. Since Chrome's launch, Firefox has been growing at about 4-5x the rate of Chrome.
@Matthew, I think it would be awesome if IE 6 disappeared sooner rather than later. I keep thinking that it's about to fall off a cliff and then it doesn't. It seems like a pretty steady decline but maybe IE 8 will change that.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | April 18, 2009 9:21 AM
"we're going to see IE users split across three versions"
"For Safari, they're currently split as bad or worse than IE"
Ya, that sure makes for a healthy Internet doesn't it.
It's a good thing that Mozilla gives a damn.
How about taking 3 IE users and sit them down (in the same room) to listen to/watch the same program on a crystal radio receiver (IE6), a televisor (IE7), and a 2004 model Sharp TV (IE8). Same applies for Safari and computers can be used instead of over the air broadcast media.
Throw in security breaches to their home, exploitation of themselves and their secrets etc etc.
Thanks Wikipedia and Google.
Posted by: Ken Saunders | April 18, 2009 2:56 PM
That's all the stats I need!
On long weekends, when users are at home, they browse more with Firefox, than IE.
A simple stat, but it shows *EXACTLY* what matters - user's choice.
At work many users are *FORCED* to use IE by their I.T. Departments (often even IE6!)
Thus I'm going to make a bold statement:
"Corporate I.T. is holding back the Web"
And that really sucks, because you can't code workarounds for that.
So glad I work for a company that not only embraces Firefox - but recommends it (or Chrome) over IE.
Thanks for the stats... especially the one that mattered to me!
Travix
Posted by: travis | April 20, 2009 5:16 AM
Good analysis. For the most part, I agree. But, also I think the Chrome extension API looks good, and if Chrome starts to get a lot of available extensions it could get a lot more usage.
Posted by: Will Peavy | April 27, 2009 6:39 AM
Numbers are in : http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1
Percentage gains or losses:
IE : -0.72%
FF : 0.43%
Safari: -0.02%
Chrome: 0.19%
Netsc.: 0.13%
Opera : -0.02%
Firefox and Chrome are the biggest gainers. Netscape numbers look very fishy.
Posted by: mda | May 1, 2009 9:15 AM
Hmm. I'm actually expecting IE6 to be borderline edge-case by Christmas and near-death by June of next year. In addition to the effect of Windows Update, there are many corporations (and government agencies) that are waiting to leapfrog over Vista when Windows 7 drops. This will exacerbate the demise of IE6, but won't effect IE7 to the same degree. So, I see a greater end-of-year disparity between IE6 and IE7.
I relish these types of posts. Keep 'em coming!