It’s been a couple of months since I looked at the browser market. IE’s drop below 50% was the big news in October. This month’s news is less dramatic but web developers will let out a whoop of joy: Chrome 7 has overtaken IE7 to become the world’s third most-popular browser with a 12.09% market share.
Chrome 7 is still some way behind Firefox 3.6 (25.32%) and IE8 (29.49%), but IE7’s demise is cause for celebration! (Personally, I find IE7 more problematical than IE6.)
Let’s take a look at the StatCounter statistics in more detail…
| Browser | September | November | change | relative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IE 9.0 beta | 0.09% | 0.32% | +0.23% | +255.60% |
| IE 8.0 | 29.38% | 29.49% | +0.11% | +0.40% |
| IE 7.0 | 12.98% | 11.90% | -1.08% | -8.30% |
| IE 6.0 | 7.42% | 6.45% | -0.97% | -13.10% |
| Firefox 4.0 beta | 0.26% | 0.41% | +0.15% | +57.70% |
| Firefox 3.5+ | 28.33% | 28.50% | +0.17% | +0.60% |
| Firefox 3.1- | 2.48% | 2.26% | -0.22% | -8.90% |
| Chrome | 11.52% | 13.32% | +1.80% | +15.60% |
| Safari | 4.22% | 4.70% | +0.48% | +11.40% |
| Opera | 2.03% | 2.02% | -0.01% | -0.50% |
| Others | 1.38% | 0.95% | -0.43% | -31.20% |
| IE (all) | 49.87% | 48.16% | -1.71% | -3.40% |
| Firefox (all) | 31.07% | 31.17% | +0.10% | +0.30% |
The ‘change’ column shows the absolute increase or decrease in market share. The ‘relative’ column indicates relative movements, i.e., IE7 lost 8.3% of its users during the past two months.
Microsoft will be pleased to see IE8 usage has barely changed and there’s been a 2.5x increase in IE9 users! The IE9 statistics are a little unreliable — October’s figure was very low because the beta browser was released on 15 September 2010. However, IE9 beta is catching Firefox 4 beta, which has been available longer.
Firefox’s overall share remained mostly static. A few users have upgraded, but there are no significant losses or gains.
It’s a similar story for Opera and Safari. Safari’s modest increase owes much to the success of the iPad which accounts for 0.26% of the market.
The combined IE6 and IE7 share has dropped by 2% with Chrome taking the majority of those users. The growth of Google’s browser remains impressive, and I suspect it’s been helped by the delayed release of Firefox 4 and the continued date uncertainty for IE9.
However, could everything change in 2011? Will IE9’s speed boost win back users who switched to Chrome? Will Firefox 4 re-ignite people’s passion? Will RockMelt become the sixth mainstream browser? It’ll be an interesting year…
Craig BucklerCraig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.
