Today is the first day of the second month of year 2010. This indicates how fast we seem to be moving during the new year. Soon we will again be singing Christmas Carols. Don’t laugh—it’s true.
Continuing my monthly ritual, I’ve obtained the monthly statistics from Net Applications, regarding the global market share of the honchos in the Web browsing arena. These are the official numbers from Net Applications still hot out of the oven. Here we go.
- Internet Explorer: 62.18 percent
- Firefox: 24.41 percent
- Chrome: 5.20 percent
- Safari: 4.51 percent
- Opera: 2-38 percent
- Opera Mini: 0.59 percent
- Other: 0.72 percent
COMMENTS:
It was no surprise that Microsoft’s numbers are falling like sand castles after an ocean wave. In January, Internet Explorer lost 0.51 points equivalent to 0.81 percent. This figure doesn’t seem like much, but based on the billions of search engines users, it sure amounts to a big loss. Microsoft is far from dead, but it’s dripping red in on all sides, and particularly in markets closest to consumers like mobile computing where it’s steadily losing market share. Steve Ballmer should wake up and start talking to its troops instead and continuing to stamp its feet and whining at Google.
On the operating system arena, Windows is also losing ground. In January its market share went down from 92.21 to 92.02 percent. That’s a drop of 0.21 percentage points. On the other hand, Mac OS and the iPhone OS is picking steam Mac OS gained 0.02 points and the iPhone OS stepped up 0.03 percent. Not much, but the upward trend is there thanks to the spectacular performance of the iPhone, Mac portable computers and the legendary iPod. The latest buzz of the iPad is also a helping hand. This latest gadget is at the center of the Geeks’ radar right now.
Firefox’s people are saddened once more. They failed to reach the elusive 25 percent global market landmark. Their performance was only 24.41, down from 24.61 percent in December. For two consecutive months, their numbers have been falling. Is this a cause of concern? I don’t know, but I would sleep with one eye open if I were Mozilla—just in case.
Chrome is sailing under blue skies and calm waters. They hold a solid strong third place and growing. In January their market share increased 0.57 percent or 5.20 percent of the whole pie. That’s a hike of a walloping 12.31 percent. All I can say is that Google is Google, and it’s hard to bully the undisputed 800-pound tech gorilla of the 21st century.
Apple Safari is holding its ground closely following Chrome’s trail. It’s well protected by the guns of the iPhone, iPod, Mac computers and lately, the iPad. In January they occupied the fourth place with a global market share of 4.51 percent.
Norwegian Opera and Opera Mini are keeping their heads above the water and surviving in the desktop Web browsing territory. In the mobile world, Norwegian Opera is doing just fine. However, they have to be careful, because Google is looking closely at this domain after launching the Android mobile operating system and the Google-branded Nexus One smart phone. This is a knife-in-mouth scenario are you are well aware, and “there is no time to count the bodies that lie on the field.”
That’s it guys. The clear winner in January was Google Chrome and the biggest losers were Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Apple Safari and Norwegian Opera are hanging in there weathering the storm. Until next month and Good Day.
