Top Browsers Market Share - April 2008
May 2, 2008 by Omar Upegui R.
As the rat race continues to determine which is the most beautiful of them all, it’s interesting to appreciate which of the big guys is attracting more users. To obtain this market share information, I relied on Net Applications which, in my opinion, is the best valid source available.
TOP BROWSERS MARKET SHARE - APRIL 2008
(Expressed in Percentages)
| Browsers | April | March | Percentage |
| Internet Explorer | 76.02 | 74.80 | 1.22 |
| Firefox | 16.96 | 17.83 | 0.87 |
| Safari | 05.51 | 05.82 | 0.31 |
| Opera | 00.65 | 00.69 | 0.04 |
| Netscape | 00.53 | 00.55 | 0.02 |
| Others | 00.33 | 00.31 | 0.02 |
| T O T A L: | 100.00 | 100.00 | 0 |
COMMENTS:
- Internet Explorer was the Gold Medal winner. It was a total surprise. I had no idea Microsoft IE would reverse its declining trend in such a manner. It gained 1.22 points which is absolutely outstanding. Steve Ballmer is beating the war drums again.
- Firefox was a big loser. It lost almost one point to Internet Explorer. With all the buzz about Firefox 3, I was expecting a better performance from the people of Mozilla. I guess we will have to wait another thirty days.
- Safari traveled South in April. This was another surprise. After all effort made by Apple to link Safari with iTunes and in its Update Apple Software, the only logical way was up. Nope, instead Safari lost 0.31 points in April.
- Opera didn’t move an inch in April. They are focusing in the mobile and gadget domain where they are leading the pack.
- Netscape was also in quick sand. It was stagnant in April. I was expecting a widespread migration to Flock and/or Firefox after AOL pulled the plug on this legendary browser.
As you can see in the table, all the big players decided to take a vacation in Mexico, except the juggernaut Internet Explorer who took the gold in April in a big way. I’ll see you again next month and find out what happens in this extraordinary race to grasp the golden medal. Good Day!
That is interesting considering that appearantly Apple did have tremendous growth.
http://gizmodo.com/386407/stealth-safari-update-for-windows-was-super-effective-tripled-marketshare
Hi Don:
“Net Applications reports that it tripled Safari’s market share in only a month.”
I took Net Applications total Safari’s performance, regardless of its individual versions as well as the rest of the other browsers.
I understand the Safari’s leap was made with version Windows 3.1 as indicated in Gizmodo’s graph. Overall, Apple Safari lost about a third of a point during April.
I would also like to point out that, there were more downloads of Safari 3.1 on Windows because it was bundled with iTunes, but that doesn’t mean people are actually using it. They just got it without their knowledge. I think this is a wrong business practice. Microsoft started it by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
I was very disappointed with Mozilla Firefox’s performance, considering all the digital ink used in promoting Firefox 3. I’m still wondering what happened?
Regards,
Omar.-
I have Firefox 3 running on one of my Linux boxes. For the moment, I am not impressed.
Hi Don:
I’m waiting until the final version is out to avoid crashing and/or freezing problems.
I had the impression FX 3 was a smash, specially speed performance and GUI appearance.
Thanks for your comments.
Regards,
Omar.-