“According to Market Share [NetApplications], Apple computer’s Safari Web browser continues to gain market share in the Internet browser arena,” Switch To A Mac reports.
“In August 2005, Safari’s market share was 2.20 percent. In August 2006, Safari’s market share comes in at 3.21 percent… The rise from 2.20 to 3.21 represents a year-over-year growth of 46 percent (rounded to the nearest whole percent) for the month of August,” Switch To A Mac reports.
“Also note that Safari is only available on Mac OS X. Safari’s 46 percent rise year-over-year for August is a clear sign that the Mac user base is expanding,” Switch To A Mac writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: NetApplications’ browser market share trend for ‘Safari’ for September, 2005 to August, 2006 does show a year-over-year upward trend, however, it must be noted that the high point for the past year period was 3.30% set in April 2006 and it has been largely flat in 2006. Whether this “flatness” is attributable to Apple’s Intel transition is unknown. The data does show that most of the gain was made between September 2005 and December 2005.
According to NetApplications:
Browser Market Share Trend
This report lists the market share of the top browsers in use. This data is derived by aggregating the traffic across our network of websites that use our service.
Data is aggregated monthly and is available to subscribers for the prior month shortly after the current month begins.
About Our Market Share Statistics
This data provides valuable insight into significant trends for internet usage. These statistics include monthly information on key statistics such as browser trends (e.g. Internet Explorer vs. Firefox market share), search engine referral data (e.g. Yahoo vs. MSN vs. Google traffic market share) and operating system share.
We use a unique methodology for collecting this data. We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on demand network of small to medium enterprise live stats customers. The sample size for these sites is more than 40,000 urls. The information published is an aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics. The site unique visitor and referral information is summarized on a monthly basis.
In addition, we classify 300+ referral sources identified as a search engine. Aggregate traffic referrals from these engines are summarized and reported monthly. The statistics for search engines include both organic and sponsored referrals. The websites in our population represent dozens of countries in regions including North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia / Pacific Rim and Parts of Asia. Users should note that no double byte search engines are included in the search engine referral population.
The data is made available free of charge on a monthly basis that includes monthly browser market share trends, top search engine referrals, and operating systems trends.
Additional estimates about the website population:
76% participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites.
43% are commerce sites
18% are corporate sites
10% are content sites
29% classify themselves as other (includes gov, org, search engine marketers etc..)
I don’t that the % of Safari users on the web is as closely related to the % of Mac users as it used to be. With Firefox gaining market share very quickly and Opera free (plus all the other good browsers like Camino & Shiira) it’s fair to say that there are a lot more Mac users than just the Safari users.
Well that just means that the marketshare apple has should be significantly higher than 3.3% Bogus Jimmy.
Some of the increase will be due to users moving away from Internet Explorer on Mac. However, the post-Intel growth in Apple’s notebook market share will likely see Safari’s market share go up in the next 12 months.
I’m a Mac OS X user who does not use Safari regularly. From the people I know personally (who are Mac users), only about half use Safari as their default browser. But new users are likely to use Safari initially before they find out about the other excellent alternatives. So the rise is probably due to a surge of recent Mac converts. That’s very good…
I tried firefox and it seems to load pages slower that Safari. Then I tried Opera. I liked it for a while but some crucial content doesn’t show up and it didn’t show much speed improvement. From my personal use, i find Safari to be the best one.
What are the benefits of the others?
MDN is up late again.
Oh by the way, Safari rocks! Never a pop up. Some day everyone will be “cool like me”.
“Some of the increase will be due to users moving away from Internet Explorer on Mac”
I am not too sure who the heck would be using the Mac version of IE it was discontinues a long while ago and is a very very old build. I doubt anyone would be using it for years!
Safari is ok for me with the use -block Pop up- and -disable Plug ins- .. while Surfing.
Using primarily Camino for the time being (even QuickTime seems to load faster), but I have it ID itself as Safari.
Wow, that’s great! That means that about 14 more people are using Safari now. Go Apple!
>What are the benefits of the others?
If you use Mac OS 10.3.9 instead of 10.4.x, you’re stuck with the older version of Safari (not 2.0). Shiira is a great alternative (using the same base code as Safari), that does work with 10.3.9.
Some users have been using the Mozilla Suite for a long time, and through “momentum,” they continue to use that email/browser combo application. The current version is renamed SeaMonkey and continues to be updated. They’re just comfortable with it, and its actually pretty good.
Firefox has its extensions and themes, and some users like that customizing aspect of Firefox.
I think its “Gecko” siblng Camino is an excellent alternative browser. There are a few sites that Safari does not like and a Mozilla-based browser like Camino (or Firefox) may work better in those now rare cases.
Nick, your math is correct, assuming that there are no more than 1400 Internet users in the world. Asshole!
MW run
Me – I, I use to be a browser switcher.
Crowd – Hello Steeeeve!
Me – I use to go from browser to browser trying out different features and oh and aw at the new kinds of eye candy, even use that blue “e” for awhile, not bad.
Now I use Safari. I love that program! Tab browsing, pop-up blockers, drag-n-drop customization, RSS, menu syncing, it just works. A lot of this stuff has been added to other browsers but I keep coming back to Safari.
And no one is telling me NOT to use it because it’s not safe!!!!!! Cool!
To be fair, Safari did slow down for a while, but I switched to Open DNS and now it’s back up to its lightning self again. Turns out it wasn’t Safari after all.
On the topic: I am Mac:Firefox user who is therefore not counted as a Safari user. I think safari market share is only valid as a minimum percentage of Mac presence.
Slightly off topic: I have an issue with Firefox’s handling of Quicktime. When scrolling in Firefox the quicktime window behaves very erratically. The image stretches, flickers, and moves independent from the page.
On the other hand, Safari handles quicktime excellently. But, I am often annoyed with Safari when I am scrolling down a page and pass over a quicktime window. I immediately lose my scrolling and instead rewind or fast-forward the video. I wish this behavior was controllable in preferences.
Of course this is the same reason I hate MDN’s ConnectLink rollover advertising. I cannot scroll in peace.
Safari crashes all the time, especially when I go to certain sites. It is the fastest browser for me. I use Shiira and Firefox (slow) also. Any ideas on why Safari crashes?
I use both Safari and Firefox. Firefox is definitely faster on my G4, especially on sites where Java is heavily used.
Tell me. How many of those sites that are monitored accept only IE as a browser. Part of the under reporting of Mac usage is the stupid Microsoft ‘standards’ on IE only web sites.
Now if only Apple would fix Safari’s issues. It has problems with Javascript and sometimes hangs for no reason whatsoever, which is inexcusable for a native browser.
If it was more full featured (i.e.: Extensions, themes etc…), I would switch to Camino, which seems rock-solid and super-fast.
As it is, I find myself using Firefox for some sites that seem to give Safari problems. Firefox, while excellent, seems a tad bit slower than either Safari or Camino and still has that look of a Windows app. It seems to work with just about every shitty, supposedly IE-only site out there, though, which is more than Safari can say.
Safari 2.0 still exhibits a firewall-related problem I first noticed in the earlier version. Our agency’s firewall requires one to enter the Windows domain login and password in order to allow them to keep track of Internet usage. I can’t access that authentication system using Safari. But once I authenticate using Firefox, Safari goes right through!
Neither Firefox nor Safari are blocking all pop-ups these days. Some pushing such crap are still able to work around current blocks. The worst is one I occasionally encounter when browsing MDN (shame!). It blares out the speakers “Congratulations; you’ve just won two free iPods…” or something like that and I have to rush to find and close the window.
I do get a kick faking out my agency’s main internal web page which announces it will only work with Explorer 4.0 or later. I simply switch on the user agent available for Firefox or through Safari’s debug mode and masquerade as IE 6.0. Works well except where they’re reliant on Microsoft’s non-standard extensions or Oracle’s Java (Jinitiator).
Isn’t it funny how Nick trolls Mac pages? How come we Mac users don’t troll PC sites, Nick?
Thanks guys, Looks like I’ll stay with safari
“Safari crashes all the time, especially when I go to certain sites. It is the fastest browser for me. I use Shiira and Firefox (slow) also. Any ideas on why Safari crashes?”
The best way to fix this problem is put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and say loudly
“la la la la la la Macs Never Crash.”
Repeat that 100 times. by the time you open your eyes your probelm will still be there, but you will Truly Believe that it’s gone away.
I am running safari on my primary machine (G4 400) and its bliss..
HawHawHaw, you maroon, I didn’t say anything about my Mac crashing. It’s been on for years now without crashing.
I will say, “la la la la la la Safari Never Crashes.” with my tongue in my cheek.
posted by ron: “with my tongue in my cheek.”
How in the world do you get you tounge back there?
Ron, you are not so much a moron as a coward, but you are definitely a moron.