Catching Up With Internet Browser Stats & Marketshare

Today, I decided to chase down the recent stats related to the Internet browser market. So of course I thought I’d share what I’m reading.

First, let’s talk about internet browsers. When it comes to desktop browsing, it looks like IE is still dominating. This post over at netmarketshare.com has all the data:

• IE – 53.63%
• FireFox – 20.08%
• Chrome – 18.86%
• Safari – 5.26%
• Opera – 1.62%
• Other – 0.56%

To me, this just doesn’t seem right. I monitor a ton of sites, and I’m usually seeing IE browser share in the realm of 30-40%. I’m actually surprised to see IE over 50%. Just think: 5 years ago, IE had a marketshare of 79%. It’s crazy how so much can change in 5 years (sourceChrome was released 4 years ago, and it already has 19% marketshare? That’s crazy!

When we break it down further, we see the following stats for September 2012:

• IE8 – 24.09%
• IE9 – 19.45%
• Chrome 21 – 14.32%
• Firefox 14 – 3.20%
• IE6 – 7.22%
• Other – 31.72%

We can also look at mobile browser share:

In text form, that picture looks like this:

• Safari – 64.01%
• Android Browser – 20.94%
• Opera Mini – 9.55%
• BlackBerry – 1.38%
• Symbian – 1.08%
• Microsoft Internet Explorer – 0.75%
• Chrome – 0.67%
• Opera Mobile – 0.46%
• Opera – 0.20%
  Proprietary or Undetectable – 0.15%:
• ACCESS NetFront – 0.11%
• Obigo – 0.02%
• Mozilla – 0.02%
• Firefox – 0.01%
• Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer – 0.00%

That data seems much more reasonable. Most people surfing on a mobile phone or tablet computer are probably doing it on Safari or an Android browser. Brian Fellow would not be surprised about 85% of mobile users browsing on those 2 browsers. It’s interesting to note that Safari has jumped from 55% to 64% since last year. In that same time frame, Android browser share grew from 16% to 21%. That’s some pretty solid growth. Nice work, you two.