Google's Chrome Web browser marked another milestone for the week beginning June 21, as it leapfrogged Apple's Safari browser to take the third spot in the U.S. Browser market, according to StatCounter.
The company's Global Stats report for that week showed that Microsoft's Internet Explorer remained atop the heap with 52 percent of the U.S. Market. Mozilla's Firefox browser was in second with 28.48 percent of the market.
Chrome was third with 8.97 percent of the browser market, followed closely by Safari with 8.88 percent.
Opera was fifth with 0.65 percent of the market, according to StatCounter.
“This is quite a coup for Google as they have gone from zero to almost 10% of the US market in under two years,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter. “There is a battle royal going on between Google and Apple in the internet browser space (Chrome v Safari) as well as in the mobile market (Android v iPhone).”
While this was an important moment for Chrome stateside, on the global stage Chrome has remained well ahead of Safari for a while, claiming 9.4 percent to Safari's 4 percent.
These findings differ somewhat from May figures from NetApplications, which show that IE held 63.20 percent of the U.S. market in May, followed by Firefox with 20.38 percent, Safari with 10.43 percent, Chrome with 4.54 percent, Netscape with 0.77 percent and Opera with 0.31 percent.
In the mobile arena that Cullen alludes to, StatCounter shows that Blackberry led the way during the same week with 31.06 percent of the U.S. market, followed by iPhone with 24.92 percent.
Android was third with 16.6 percent, while iPod Touch was fourth with 14.85 percent. Opera followed with 2.96 percent of the market, while NetFront had 2.06 percent, Sony PSP had 1.67 percent, Palm had 1.47 percent and Openwave had 1.12 percent.
Mozilla is clearly late to the mobile browser party, but Jay Sullivan, vice president of products at the foundation, still thinks that we're “in the first inning of the mobile browser game.”
Sullivan sees Android as the platform that will be the best fit for Mozilla's mobile version of Firefox, which is set to debut later this year.
Sources:
http://gs.statcounter.com/press?PHPSESSID=rod7v3ibqo3l0mlat58aohab17
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0
http://gigaom.com/2010/06/28/firefox-android-meego/
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