IE8 falls below 25% market share, Firefox 15 passes 10% mark, Chrome loses users

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/01/internet-explorer-8-falls-25-market-share-firefox-15-passes-10-mark-chrome-loses-users

by dsr12 • 14 years ago

48 46 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

kbd• 14 years ago

I'd like to know how much the IE numbers would fall if they excluded China. Unfortunately, I'd need to pay money to get that data from their source.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...

Empro3• 14 years ago

Yep, China is a huge driver for IE6. Microsoft has the data you want: http://www.ie6countdown.com/

sounds• 14 years ago

From the linked article:

"IE6 unfortunately somehow managed to gain 0.30 percentage points. Web developers can’t wait for it to fall below 5 percent, and then continue to drop, but it seems to be holding on for dear life."

Either China is still deploying new Windows XP instances (the last Windows that defaulted to IE6), or ...

As mtgx observes: "There's no way Chrome still has only 18% market share, which is even lower than Firefox." The numbers just don't make sense to me.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Oh not Net Marketshare stats again...At least they are not adding iOS Safari market share anymore and then saying how Safari market share grew 200% in one month or something. Their stats are still misleading as hell, though. There's no way Chrome still has only 18% market share, which is even lower than Firefox.

giblfiz• 14 years ago

Am I the only one horribly confused by the math in these charts?

E.G. the second chart has FF at 20.08% and then has a breakout where they show FF15 at ~11%, FF14 at ~3.2%, FF13 at ~0.7%, and FF12 at ~1% Those add up to ~16% by my math... That leaves around 4% missing, I'm assuming in an "other" category, but I feel like leaving off "other" when it's your second largest grouping is bad presentation.

Anyone else have a less confused way of reading these graphs?

Empro3• 14 years ago

There are other, older Firefox versions that add up to the remainder. The same goes for the other browsers.

thurn• 14 years ago

The wikipedia article on browser share does a good job of illustrating the fact that nobody really has any idea what's going on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...

At least we can conclude Chrome is probably somewhere between 19% and 35%.

true_religion• 14 years ago

I don't know why they even included NetApplications in the statistics---it seems far off from everyone elses counters.

notatoad• 14 years ago

Everybody knows what's going on. All you need to do to see the most relevant and accurate browser stats is to open up your own analytics panel.

global browser stats are virtually useless. the only stats that matter are the stats that correspond to your audience. depending on location, interest, age, market, or any myriad other factors, your chrome usage could vary by a lot more than 19-35%.

janzer• 14 years ago

Yes, most definitely this. For instance small niche site I run mostly dealing with females 30-60 years of age, Chrome has 17%, Safari 18%, Firefox 22% and IE 36%.

azakai• 14 years ago

The chart there is somewhat misleading. It says "Usage share of desktop browsers" but NetApplications measures users, not usage.

That by itself could explain most of the variation in the chart, and lead one to conclude that IE has lots of users, but some of them do little browsing (imagine a grandparent that checks email or their stocks once or twice a day) while Chrome has users that browse a lot.

Which is more important? Depends what question you are asking.

mindstab• 14 years ago

These stats and graphs are at least a bit misleading.

For the Firefox cross section they show

10.91 + 3.20 + 0.72 + 0.99 = 20.08 ?? It is in fact 15.82

Which explains my first question: Where is Firefox 3.6? I cannot believe ie6 is still "so big" and Firefox 3.6 has vanished. Which it hasn't. It clearly has ~ 4.26% or a bit less.

Kinda misleading info graphic

Empro3• 14 years ago

"Firefox 3.6 has vanished. Which it hasn't. It clearly has ~ 4.26% or a bit less."

It clearly doesn't. Firefox 1 to Firefox 11 have a combined 4.26 percent market share.

mbrubeck2• 14 years ago

While it's a different data set, StatCounter's numbers show Firefox 3.6 accounting for 0.86% of page views last month: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Firefox_usage_share has a further breakdown of the Firefox numbers from StatCounter for September.

cynwoody• 14 years ago

According to StatCounter, over the last three months, the standings are Chrome (33.87%), IE (32.53%), Firefox (22.99%), Safari (7.4%), Opera (1.66%), and the rest (1.55%).

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201207-201209-...

mbrubeck2• 14 years ago

Note that StatCounter counts page views, while most other reports count unique visitors. Both are useful, but they can't be compared directly. The StatCounter numbers reflect which browsers have users that do more (or less) browsing than others.

IanDrake2• 14 years ago

I can see why Chrome is loosing users. They're really close to loosing me now too. The rapid updates have had some strange quality control issues and being one version behind on Flash can be a pain.

mmanfrin• 14 years ago

Loose = opposite of tight. Lose = opposite of win. Chrome is losing users and losing you.

IanDrake2• 14 years ago

I'm sure you meant well, but I know the difference...it was just a typo (or two).

aik2• 14 years ago

I completely agree. The latest version especially has rendered the browser nearly unusable for me (among many other things, pages just don't load, and the browser freezes constantly).

Seems a bit serious... I'm guessing they will resolve it soon?

cpeterso• 14 years ago

Are you using the Chrome beta or dev channel? Or are these problems with the stable channel?

zachalexander3• 14 years ago

I stopped using Chrome because I was never super excited about depending on Google for yet another crucial service, and Firefox seems to have gotten better lately (perhaps the competition has invigorated them).

I know that probably sounds paranoid, but at the end of the day, I would just rather rely on a nonprofit organization or OSS project for anything important, rather than a for-profit company... as long as the quality is comparable.

Periodic• 14 years ago

If you use Chromium then you'll be using an open-source browser. Chrome gets the bulk of its source code from Chromium, but there are some parts they can't include in the open-source distribution due to licensing restrictions.

However, that's a compromise, and it would be much nicer if it were open-source from the start.

leeoniya• 14 years ago

here's what we're seeing past 2 weeks (ecommerce site in the DIY/contractor home improvement sector):

ie9 - 23.7%

ff - 17.0%

ch - 15.0%

ie8 - 14.8%

ipad - 10.6%

sf - 8.5%

ie7 - 6.4%

ie6 - 2.4%

and - 0.8%

op - 0.5%

iphone - 0.2%

ie10 - 0.1%

*iphone and android phone stats are way off because we redirect to a dedicated mobile site for small screen sizes.

pbiggar• 14 years ago

I thought it might be interesting to include our numbers, since they surprised me. We (https://circleci.com) make tools for web developers, so this is very much for early-adopters:

Chrome: 58%

Safari: 21%

Firefox: 9%

Android: 7.5%

Everyone else, including IE: < 0.5%

nroman• 14 years ago

These pie charts are bad. You shouldn't have the same browser switch colors as you go through the charts. IE starts as purple then is blue; Firefox makes it from blue to purple to red.

jackmoore• 14 years ago

Analytics for a site I run (mainly dealing with web-dev) has Chrome usage growing at a steady rate. For the past 6 months, Chrome has gained about 1% market share a month (out of ~160,000 visits a month).

CognitiveLens• 14 years ago

There is a huge difference between losing users and losing market share, particularly in an industry characterized by steady overall growth.

Is there any evidence that Chrome has actually lost users, or has it simply not added as many as some competing browsers?

lostlogin• 14 years ago

Am I missing something? Safari is the big winner according the article with a gain of 0.16%, but IE6 gained 0.3%. Am I reading this wrong? Surely IE6 would be the big winner in this (flawed, as reading above comments suggests) study.

IE8 falls below 25% market share, Firefox 15 passes 10% mark, Chrome loses users

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