WWW Browser Market Share March 2010
The first month's browser market share data after the start of the EU browser ballot is in. If you were expecting Internet Explorer to lose market share at an accelerated pace, it hasn't happened yet. In fact, you could not tell from the data that that the browser ballot arrived last month. It has had no obvious impact in Europe, and even less so on the global scale. The browser trends that we've noted over the past several months are continuing, and they're not going to change quickly.
This past month, all major browsers showed positive growth except for Internet Explorer.
Between February and March, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 0.93 percentage points (from 61.58 percent to 60.65 percent) and Firefox increased 0.29 percentage points (from 24.23 percent to 24.52 percent). Chrome jumped a sizeable 0.52 percentage points (from 5.61 percent to 6.13 percent), Safari gained 0.20 percentage points (from 4.45 percent to 4.65 percent), and Opera budged 0.02 percentage points (from 2.35 percent to 2.37 percent).
Data source: Net Applications
Some may see IE's drop last month as an indication that the browser ballot is taking its toll. While we don't doubt it is having an effect, we've seen IE drop more than one percentage point more than once last year, so last month's loss is hardly out of the ordinary. All other browsers gained, as is typical with any large drop of IE. This means that Firefox is back on its way towards the 25 percent mark, after losing share three months in a row. It's worth noting that Firefox 3.6 rocketed to 11.25 percent meaning it passed version 3.5 (now at 9.28 percent). We predicted last month that it would easily pass all of Chrome, but it seems to have actually passed Chrome and Safari combined—great news for Mozilla.
Data source: Net Applications
In contrast to Firefox's quick success with new releases, Internet Explorer doesn't have as quick an update loop. Nevertheless, IE is still used by more than half of all users and IE8 is being used by one in four users on the Web. The importance of having a default browser on the dominant operating system is still the biggest factor in browser adoption. IE7 and IE6 are both slowly moving towards their respective 10 percent marks. Although IE6's share is greater than IE7's, which can be attributed to businesses still using customized intranet applications as well as the fact that XP's share is much bigger than Vista's, it dropped a whopping 1.35 percentage points while IE7 only fell 0.41 percentage points. IE8 rose 0.8 percentage points to 26.6 percent. Microsoft this month released the IE9 Platform Preview and while the reception was quite positive, there are questions about how well and quickly Microsoft can deliver.
Data source: StatCounter
As you can see, Internet Explorer's drop in Europe was hardly noticeable; Firefox actually lost more share last month. The bigger trend of Chrome stealing users from Firefox was the most noticeable trend. Safari and Opera both gained a little share. These numbers conflict with what third-party browser makers are saying: they saw a big growth in download numbers. After all, some users who know nothing but IE were confronted with other browsers for the first time and many of those took one or more of the options out for a spin. Download numbers may be up, but whether these users are actually sticking with an alternative browser is another story. Habits are hard to break, and one month is certainly not enough to measure whether they are breaking in large numbers.
You can see the market share pie for March 2010, according to Net Applications, at the top of this post. The graph just above shows how things at Ars are very different: Firefox continues to dominate, but the default browsers for Windows and Mac OS X still show their strength. This month, we actually saw Chrome surpass Internet Explorer (now the fourth-most-popular browser among Ars readers) and nipping at the heels of Safari. Compared to last month, Firefox lost share, Safari lost share, and so did IE. Meanwhile, Chrome and Opera both gained, just like last month. Once again, Chrome's gain was the biggest change.
Source: arstechnica.com
