“Firefox, the free open-source Web browser from Mozilla Corp., quietly gained enough users in March to finally grab 10% of the Web browser market, according to a report released yesterday by Web audience-measurement firm NetApplications.com. Firefox was used by 10.05% of Web surfers last month, up from 9.75% in February. That compared with the 84.7% of users on various versions of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer in March,” Eric Lai reports for Computerworld. “In third place, according to Net Applications, with 3.19% was Apple Computer Inc.’s Safari browser, which is used only on Macintosh computers. Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications specializes in tracking browser usage at small to midsize companies.”
Full article here.
Net Applications March 2006 Browser Share numbers can be seen here.
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What my professor said last year … a New England college whcih I shall not name.
I thought it apropos:
Sometimes things happen so slowly that they seemingly aren’t happening at all, from our meager human perspective. Gradual shifts in societal attitudes toward nudity, or religious tolerance, or acceptable media content. Improvements in nutrition, or extension of average lifespans.
This may be another one of those things. The slow, almost blissfully-acidic disintegration of the Microsoft colossus. The public at large probably perceives very little of it, indeed possibly thinks that the company will always exist. But those of us following trends, we who are aware of the technological and marketing difficulties of maintaining forever such a large and misbegotten and fundamentally shallow enterprise, built as it was on the back of a papier mache turtle unable to bear its weight — we see this erosion occurring.
We see it, and we hold our collective breath, that it might one day yield us all an efficient, economical model of computer and technological literacy that is honest, that is more pure, that is concerned with killing the waste that Microsoft has wrought in all of our lives.
And we . . . are . . . glad of it.
Microsoft will probably not disappear, but an IT world where Microsoft has 50% or less of market share would be so radically different that initially it would be weird for those that lived through its hell of crappy software dominnace and then would bring such a relief and a way better computing landscape…
Maybe if Microsoft goes down, Western productivity will increase to the levels the I.T. advertisers lead us to believe 20 years ago.
I wonder if Apple will release Safari on Windows
IE’s actual percentage is probably a couple points lower. Opera became a free browser like six months ago, which increased its userbase quite a bit. However, it still identifies itself as IE by default.
Once I so used to Safari (down at the moment) & FireFox,I find IE is a dinasour…. so lame…. so useless. So backward.
Why 80 over% people still stubbornly using the IE. I bet most(all) of them are windoze user.
Well, I cannot blame them. Because they have been “brain wash” by the doze company. They make them to keep saying in their that “I love this company!”.
They are sooo lame. They have no taste, absolutely no taste.
I’m feeling sad for them. Please come to the light, brothers & sisters, let us save you.
As I say everytime these numbers come out, the 3.19% (can’t we just say 3.2%?) is a base. AT LEAST 3.2% of computer users out there are Mac users. That is how you should read these Safari numbers.
So, what’s the real number of Mac users? 4.0%? 5.0%? 6.0%? Higher anyone?
I work for a company in their tech support department. The product I support is browser-based. *sigh* it only works on IE for Windows.
I urge everyone who encounteres an IE-only environment to send a little note to the developers, support staff, hell even the sales staff of that company and make an official request for a Standards-Based Browser support.
Cubert,
if you hang around MDN long enough with all us other losers, you’ll eventually see a claim that the Mac install base is more like 15%.
Ahem…
about as reliable as the old saw that 10% of the population is gay. Who says? Err…gay activists. No bias there.
Anyways, there are some mac users that don’t use Safari, and there are some that are still using pre-OS X.
And there are windows computers in workhorse applications (like running ATMs) that don ‘t do any web browsing
So the real number is larger than 3.19% but certainly NOT 15%. Let’s say…4?
‘Prince’,
FWIW, you may be a loser, but I doubt you are ‘one of us’.
If you care to condescend to answer our query, we would love to entertain your thoughts as to where we can find ‘unbiased’ numbers to your claim.
Are you positing that say, Steve Ballmer — would be the most reliable source of Macintosh stats?
Camino-Shiira are better than Firefox. Firefox phones home on launch, probably trying to bolster the stats. iCab is the Swiss Army Knife of browsers. Opera is quirky. Safari’s buggy. Millions of productive hours have been wasted on workarounds for Exploder’s poor standards support; billions on security. And since any good browser plays masquerade, the stats are meaningless.
When people ask me, as they often do, what they should do about the malware problems with their machines, the first thing I tell them is to ditch IE. Switching from IE to Firefox is nearly transparent on Windows, even for novices, but many are still afraid to use anything else.
If they glance nervously at my Powerbook like it’s a witch doctor’s magic stick and scurry away, I know I’m looking at a future de-fragmenter. If not, I know they’ve got a fighting chance…
I still use Lynx. It’s the most reliable browser….
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Uh, does anyone here remember Lynx? Most of you probably had never even heard of the web when Lynx was in use. Just playin’ with ya’! Check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_browser if you want some history lessons.
You can also read about NCSA Mosaic, the browser that really pretty much started it all at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser) . I remember using that back in ’93 on my Mac. Ahh, those were the good ol’ days!
Anonymous, nice post. Insightful.
Prince:
Yes, indeed. Today in my college library, I encountered a guy with one of the old clamshell iBooks. I was fascinated to encounter a computer still running a pre-X version of the operating system. It was so quaint.
If you look at the trend for Safari, that browser has almost doubled its market share in the last year. That’s very encouraging.
A year or so ago the Software Publishers Association estimated that the Mac installed base was around 16%. They also said that Mac users purchase 18% of all software sold. Given that Mac’s outlast PeeCees by at least a factor of 2, and perhaps as much as a factor of 4, these numbers seem consistent with the sales figures.
If the Mac installed base isn’t around 16%, it’s odd that 18% of all software sold is for Macintosh.
I also don’t believe that IE enjoys anywhere near 85% usage. Although you don’t see it as much today, a year or two ago a lot of sites locked you out if you didn’t have IE. I’m sure many people just told their browsers to spoof IE and never changed it back.
standardmess: I have a Wallstreet (circa: 1998) running Tiger.
Anonymous: Sounds like your professor read Asimov’s Foundation “trilogy.” I do believe that M$ is mortally wounded, but it will take them a while to die. I give them another 10 years. But they will eventually die (or be bought out). Karma is such a bitch!
“Opera became a free browser like six months ago”
6 months? I’ve been using it FREE on my Mac for longer than 2 years.
“However, it still identifies itself as IE by default”
You can change the defaults so it identifies as Opera or Mozilla, but keep in mind that there are still alot of IE-Based/Biased sites out there that don’t offer support for alternate browsers, most .edu or .gov sites are a few examples.
Hope this helps.
Veronica: “I wonder if Apple will release Safari on Windows”
No. iTunes for Windows was simply released to sell iPods.
Safari for Windows would sell …?
Windows users also have a large choice of browsers to download yet the majority still stick to IE.
6 months? I’ve been using it FREE on my Mac for longer than 2 years.
I mean ad-free. Most people, myself included, weren’t willing to use a “free” browser that devoted part of the window to flashing ads at you. Once they got rid of that bit of nonsense, I downloaded it and used it for awhile, so did many other people.
And you know 99% of the people never change the default user agent string, so they’re all getting reported as IE users.
I don’t know about you but I’m using FireFox on my Mac. I’ve been trying the 2.0 Alpha version for one week and it’s very stable.
Anonymous,
good post methinks.
Veronica,
good idea. It hadn’t occurred to me. It could be ‘linked’ with iTunes.
iThink,
Mozilla Corp. are doing all right thankyou, and they aren’t selling iPods or any other gadgets.
Apple has got a lot of ‘street cred.’, perhaps even more than Mozilla.
Why should there be a link to Apple hardware?
What about QuickTime Player?
I simply can’t use IE anymore. It annoys the f**k out of me. Like trying to use a program where all the features have been disabled.
BTW, the last contract I worked on had a web development team. Back last July all customer facing products were coded for IE only using ActiveX. I showed the lead developer Firefox and told him to use it at home for a bit to see if he liked it, and backed it up with these trend studies showing Firefox on a big upward swing amongst home users. About a week later he was raving on how easy it was to code for.
By the time I finished my project last month and left, they were not only moving all the customer products to Java to make them browser independent, but they also had Mac minis on their desks to check code for Safari and Camino compatibility.
Sometimes all it takes it to make people aware of the alternatives and they ditch IE like a shot.
iThink –
I think it’s a good idea for Apple to release Safari for Windows, why?
For a start it’s good for the brand. Get the default page going to the Apple home page for a start, and it get’s the logo in front of them.
It’s good for mind share. With Windows users using Safari (bundled with the iTunes/Quicktime download for example), an article such as this would show greater interest in Apple.
Also, Apple could push a standards compliant web browser onto Windows users, making them realise that by using IE they are further damaging the web by supporting a non-standards compliant browser.
It would cost Apple next-to-nothing.