Web Browser Trends - Microsoft Loses More Ground to Mozilla and Apple

FireFox Downloads Surpass 1 BILLION

The Mozilla Firefox web browser recently surpassed it 1 BILLIONTH download. Of course, while we’re throwing around those kinds of numbers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 surpassed 200 MILLION downloads, according to cnet.

On the Spread Firefox site, the current number of downloads for the browser (as of last viewing, 2009-08-05 10:35 AM EST) equaled 1,006,472,513, which is to say, 1 BILLION, 6 MILLION, plus change.

Those are pretty large numbers that sound impressive, but what do they really mean? Just because these browsers have had that many downloads, does that mean people are really using them to surf the web? Are they trying out new technology and then returning to their tried and true browser at the end of the day? Or, as is the case for many a web developer, are they installing these browsers side by side?

Download numbers make fantastic headlines, but by themselves they don’t tell much of the story. For that, we need to look at browser usage trends, over platforms, over time.

What Do Our Own Stats Say?

I decided to take a look at some of the data that we’ve been collecting. For the purposes of this blog entry, I chose to examine the Google Analytics data for one of our largest consumer plus business oriented sites, the Metal Roofing Alliance. This site caters to consumers, businesses, trade organizations, and the media, so it seemed like a good cross-section of Internet browsers for a sample set.

After chunking the numbers from July 2008 through July 2009, there were some interesting (and somewhat unexpected) trends that emerged. 

The thirty-thousand foot summary is this: across all platforms, Internet Explorer lost approximately 6.6% of the browser market share while Firefox gained 3.1%, Apple’s Safari gained 2.0%, Google’s Chrome gained 1.4%, and even the Opera web browser was marginally in the black (by about 0.1%).

The fifteen-thousand foot summary: on all operating systems identifying themselves as Microsoft Windows (Vista, XP, 2003, ME, etc.), Internet Explorer still lost 6.5% of the ground (the rest of the ground that IE gave up, not surprisingly, occurred on the Mac, where IE has been deprecated for over half a decade now), with Firefox gaining 2.7%, Chrome gaining 1.4%, Safari claiming a meager 0.3%, and Opera, again, in the marginal black.

The other fifteen-thousand foot summary: when examining operating systems as reported by web browsers, Windows lost 2.2% of the market, with Macintosh claiming 1.4% and the iPhone claiming 0.5%, for a combined Apple gain of 1.9%! Linux also came in with a marginal uptick.

Highlights for those overwhelmed by graphs:

• Year-over-year, Internet Explorer lost 6.6% of the total web browser market and, more significantly, lost 6.5% of the market on its own Windows operating system, where it comes bundled as the default web browser.
• During the same time period, usage of the Windows operating system (as a platform for browsing the web, anyway) dropped by 2.2%.
• Surprisingly (or maybe not, based on recent observations out and aboout), the use of the iPhone as a medium to view the Internet rose from virtually nil to just over half a percent!

Raw data, as normalized by percentage of total web traffic, is available upon request.

Browser Usage Trends

Of course, if you don’t have access to a bunch of web server logs, don’t have time to crunch a bunch of numbers, or don’t have a team of professionals like those at Congruent Media to help you out, you can still get a good feeling for the current trends by going to the Net Applications Market Share site.

Among other potential useful data available to the public is the “Top Browser Share Trend” report. This report is customizable by date span and a few other key criteria. For example, usage data from July 2008 through July 2009 can be found here:

The general trend for IE 6-8 versus all other browsers tends to follow what we’ve seen in our own data – a slow decline for Microsoft, losing ground to the combined forces of the competition, but most notably Firefox.

What Does This All Mean?

In general, this loss of market share is a good thing. Anything that can challenge the dominance of the biggest player in the market spurs innovation on all parts. The fact that there are five significant browsers in the mix (Internet Explore, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera) means that a host of issues can be addressed for specific user groups and niche markets. I use Firefox primarily in the office because it has good developer tools, a must for anyone building a rich internet application. At home, I tend to use Chrome or (gasp) Internet Explorer. Microsoft, of course, needs to get smarter and better – not simply resting on its laurels. It needs to come out with something innovative and new to sharpen its competitive edge, instead of just playing catch-up.

Of course, there is a war just heating up here, larger than the competition over browser market share. In tandem with its 5% browser share loss, Microsoft also lost about 2% of its operating system territory, and almost all of that went to Apple, as reflected in our browser operating system data. 

The bigger stakes are in the integration of operating system, Internet, and peripheral devices. Software-as-a-service requires a web browser that will work correctly with all of the rich feature set provided by AJAX or Flex technologies. Meanwhile, the use of PDAs and SmartPhones demands that these devices be easily synchronized with or connected to one’s own desktop. Don’t forget about your media-playing devices like your MP3 player or your Internet-enabled television.

Apple is already the king of ease-of-integration, making it a snap to merge your Mac, iPhone, iPod, wireless speakers, and whatever other Apple-enabled devices you might have, into a single network of electronic objects communicating with each other synergistically.

And lest we forget, Google is taking aim at Microsoft’s empire. It plans to release its Chrome operating system later this year, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it features the same ease-of-use integration with its own products, like the Android phone and, of course, the web browser of the same name.