Google’s Chrome Web browser broke the 5 percent mark in January, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox both lost market share, according to Net Applications.
The company shows that Internet Explorer finished January with 62.18 percent of the worldwide market, down from 62.69 percent in December. This was the browser’s eight consecutive month of declining market share.
Firefox finished January with 24.41 percent of the global browser market, down from 24.61 percent in the last month of 2009. Mozilla’s darling has been losing market share since November.
Chrome, on the other hand, has continued its very long run of increasing market share and finished January with 5.20 percent of the global browser market, according to Net Applications. This reflected an improvement upon its 4.63 percent share in December. Back in March 2009, Chrome held just 1.62 percent of the market. It took the third spot from Apple’s Safari in December.
Google had hoped that Chrome would achieve 5 percent market share by September 2010, and 10 percent by September 2011. If its current pace holds, the company’s expectations will look far too conservative in retrospect.
Safari finished January with 4.51 percent of the market, up from 4.46 percent in December. It has seen steadily increasing share for a while now, though there have been month-to-month dips here and there.
Opera finished with 2.38 percent of the market, down from 2.40 percent in December.
The mobile browser landscape is shaping up quite differently, according to StatCounter’s global statistics. At the start of February, Opera held 25.02 percent of the mobile browser market, down from 25.53 percent in January.
The iPhone browser has 22.37 percent of the market, while Nokia’s mobile browser boasts 16.68 percent of the market. Meanwhile, the iTouch browser has 12.47 percent of the mobile browser market, the BlackBerry browser has 10.39 percent and the Android browser has 4.99 percent.
The Nokia N900 smartphone recently became the first to get a mobile version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, which will be made available for other smartphone operating systems in the future.
Its mobile presence could help lessen the pain of Mozilla’s stagnating PC browser market share. The company is looking into developing versions of Firefox that will be compatible with Android and Windows Mobile. The iPhone and BlackBerry, however, are not going to receive mobile Firefox versions anytime soon.
Sources:
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1&sample=15
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9150258/Chrome_snatches_share_from_IE_Firefox?taxonomyId=16
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201001-201002
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=71403&page=1
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