The
usage shareUsage share refers to the relative market adoption of various products, for example:*Web browsers*BitTorrent clients*Operating systems*Web search engines*Instant messaging clients-See also:*Market share*Market value*Market power...
of a
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
is the proportion, often expressed as a percentage, of users of all web browsers who use that particular browser. This figure can only be
estimatedEstimation is the calculated approximation of a result which is usable even if input data may be incomplete or uncertain.In statistics,*estimation theory and estimator, for topics involving inferences about probability distributions...
, typically by determining the proportion of visitors to a group of
websiteA website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
s that use a particular web browser. Browser usage share varies from place to place as well as through time.
Accuracy
Measuring browser usage in the number of requests (page hits) made by each
user agentIn computing, a user agent is a client application implementing a network protocol used in communications within a client–server distributed computing system...
can be misleading.
Overestimation
Not all requests are generated by a user, as a user agent can make requests at regular time intervals without user input. In this case, the user's activity might be overestimated. Some examples:
- Certain anti-virus products fake their user-agent to appear to be popular browsers. This is done to trick attack sites that might display clean content to the scanner, but not to the browser. The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
reported in June 2008 that traffic from AVG Linkscanner, using an IE6Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, a web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems...
user-agent, outstripped human link clicks by nearly 10 to 1.
- A user who revisits a site shortly after changing or upgrading browsers may be double-counted under some methods; overall numbers at the time of a new version's release may be skewed.
Underestimation
It is also possible to underestimate the usage share by using the number of requests, for example:
- Opera and Gecko-based browsers since Firefox 1.5 use fast Document Object Model
The Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...
(DOM) caching. JavaScript is only executed on pageload from net or disk cache, but not if it is loaded from DOM cache. This can have an impact on JavaScript-based tracking of browser statistics.
- While most browsers
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
generate additional page hits by refreshing web pages when user navigates back through page history, some browsers (such as OperaOpera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...
) reuse cached content without resending requests to the server.
- Generally, the more faithfully a browser implements HTTP's cache specifications, the more it will be under-reported relative to browsers that implement those specifications poorly.
- Some ISPs, mainly mobile network operator
A mobile network operator , also known as mobile phone operator , carrier service provider , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, or cellular company, or mobile network carrier is a telephone company that provides services for mobile phone subscribers.One essential...
s, have begun stripping the user agent strings.
Regional variations
Web browser usage statistics vary significantly in different geographic regions across the globe.
In China, Internet Explorer dominates usage; in Germany, Firefox is the most used browser; in Belarus, Opera is the most popular; whereas Chrome is browser of choice in South America.
Differences in measuring
Net Applications and W3Counter use unique visitors to measure web usage. This has the effect that power users visiting a site ten times will only by counted once but ten times by stats companies that measure page hits. Net Applications also weights its data by geographical location based on CIA factbook of internet users.
Summary table
The following tables summarize the usage share of browsers for the indicated month.
StatCounter (July 2008 to present)
StatCounterStatCounter is a web traffic analysis tool. Access to basic services is free and advanced services can cost between $9 and $119 a month. The company is based in Dublin. The statistics from StatCounter are used to compute web usage share for example....
statistics are directly derived from hits (not unique visitors) from 3 million sites using StatCounter totaling more than 15 billion hits per month. No artificial weightings are used.
Note about how numbers are reported:
StatCounter reports desktop and mobile browser share separately, we report them together. For consistency, each desktop browser share has been reduced by multiplying it by the current overall
desktop share versus mobile. Similarly, mobile browser shares have each been multiplied by the overall mobile percentage. This avoids having greater than 100% usage share when combining mobile and desktop.
Global desktop and mobile stats combined from StatCounter (Top 5 browsers)
Date
|
Internet
ExplorerWindows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
|
ChromeGoogle Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
|
Firefox |
Safari Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...
|
Opera Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...
|
Android |
Mobile
Total |
| Desktop |
Mobile |
Total |
Desktop |
Mobile |
Total |
| November 2011 |
40.68% |
25.49% |
25.25% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.8% |
| October 2011 |
37.55% |
23.36% |
24.66% |
5.54% |
1.53% |
7.09% |
1.69% |
1.41% |
3.10% |
1.37% |
6.55% |
| September 2011 |
38.85% |
22.02% |
24.98% |
5.22% |
1.42% |
6.64% |
1.55% |
1.51% |
3.06% |
1.34% |
6.74% |
| August 2011 |
38.91% |
21.51% |
25.53% |
4.82% |
1.37% |
6.19% |
1.55% |
1.54% |
3.09% |
1.40% |
7.12% |
| July 2011 |
39.47% |
20.59% |
25.99% |
4.81% |
1.40% |
6.21% |
1.54% |
1.54% |
3.08% |
1.28% |
7.02% |
| June 2011 |
40.73% 19.30% |
26.49% |
|
4.74% |
|
|
1.63% |
|
|
|
6.53% |
StatCounter Mobile
Mobile browser stats from StatCounter
Date
|
Opera MiniOpera Mini is a web browser designed primarily for mobile phones, smartphones and personal digital assistants. Until version 4 it used the Java ME platform, requiring the mobile device to run Java ME applications. From version 5 it is also available as a native application for Android, iOS, Symbian...
|
Android |
SafariA safari is an overland journey, usually a trip by tourists to Africa. Traditionally, the term is used for a big-game hunt, but today the term often refers to a trip taken not for the purposes of hunting, but to observe and photograph animals and other wildlife.-Etymology:Entering the English...
|
Nokia browser |
Black
BerryBlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
|
UC Browser |
Other |
iPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
|
iPod Touch The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
|
Total |
| 2011-10 |
21.52% |
20.88% |
18.78% |
4.58% |
23.36% |
12.40% |
9.26% |
4.70% |
7.88% |
| 2011-09 |
22.45% |
19.90% |
16.75% |
4.35% |
20.10% |
16.01% |
10.51% |
0.97% |
9.06% |
| 2011-08 |
21.61% |
19.72% |
14.91% |
4.40% |
19.31% |
16.99% |
11.64% |
|
10.77% |
| 2011-07 |
22.07% |
18.17% |
15.10% |
4.85% |
19.95% |
17.10% |
12.30% |
|
10.41% |
Clicky (Late September 2009 to present)
W3Counter (May 2007 to present)
This site counts the last 15,000 page views from each of approximately 50,000 websites.
This limits the influence of sites with more than 15,000 monthly visitors on the usage statistics.
W3Counter is not affiliated with the W3C.
Net Applications (2004 Q4 to present)
Net Applications bases its usage share on statistics from 40,000 websites having around 160 million unique visitors per month. The mean site has 1.3 thousand unique visitors per day.
On 1 August 2009, Net Applications began weighting its raw data based on the number of internet users in the countries concerned, using data from the CIA ; the changes were applied retroactively to older data. The table below uses weighted data from 2007 Q4 onwards, and this is reflected in the summary table above.
StatOwl.com (September 2008 to present)
92% of sites monitored by StatOwl serve predominantly United States market.
Wikimedia (April 2009 to present)
Wikimedia traffic analysis reports are based on server logs of about 4 billion page requests per month, based on the user agent information that accompanied the requests. These server logs cover requests to all the
Wikimedia FoundationWikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
projects, including
WikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
,
Wikimedia CommonsWikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
,
WiktionaryWiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages...
,
WikibooksWikibooks is a Wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit....
,
WikiquoteWikiquote is one of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, running on MediaWiki software. Based on an idea by Daniel Alston and implemented by Brion Vibber, the goal of the project is to produce collaboratively a vast reference of quotations from prominent people, books,...
,
WikisourceWikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has...
,
WikinewsWikinews is a free-content news source wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The site works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying "on Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an...
,
WikiversityWikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project, which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than...
and others.
TheCounter.com (2000 to 2009)
TheCounter.com identifies sixteen versions of six browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, and Konqueror). Other browsers are categorised as either ‘Netscape compatible’ (including Google Chrome, which may also be categorized as 'Safari' due to its 'Webkit' subtag) or ‘unknown’. Internet Explorer 8 is identified as Internet Explorer 7. Monthly data includes all hits from 2008-02-01 until the end of the month concerned. More than the exact browser type, this data identifies the underlying web rendering engine used by various browsers, and the table below aggregates them in the same column.
OneStat.com (2002-04 to 2009-03)
ADTECH (Europe, 2004 to 2009-Q4)
AT Internet Institute (Europe, 2007-07 to 2010-06)
AT Internet Institute was formerly known as XiTi.
Method: Only counts visits to local sites in 23 European countries and then averages the percentages for those 23 European countries independent of population size.
WebSideStory (USA, 1999-02 to 2006-06)
GVU WWW user survey (1994-01 to 1998-10)
EWS Web Server at UIUC (1996 Q2 to 1998)
ZD Market Intelligence (USA, 1997-01 to 1998-01)
Zona Research (USA, 1997-01 to 1998-07)
AdKnowledge (1998-01 to 1998-06)
Dataquest (1995 to 1997)
International Data Corporation (US, 1996 to 1997)
See also
- Browser wars
Browser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during...
- Comparison of web browsers
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.-Historical web browsers:...
- Layout engine
A web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...
- List of web browsers
- Timeline of web browsers
- Usage share
Usage share refers to the relative market adoption of various products, for example:*Web browsers*BitTorrent clients*Operating systems*Web search engines*Instant messaging clients-See also:*Market share*Market value*Market power...
, Market shareMarket share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
- Usage share of operating systems
External links
- Chuck Upsdell's Browser Stats lists web stats from many different stats sources and gives the approximate current usage share of the most popular layout engines.
- W3Schools' Browser Statistics lists the web stats only from the W3 Schools site, which gives the approximate usage share of browsers among "people with an interest for web technologies."