The October browser market share numbers are in. It was a bloody month for Microsoft, while Mozilla was able to slow Firefox’ decline. Chrome gained substantially and posted a new 6-month gain record. It appears that virtually all users IE and Firefox are losing migrate to Chrome. Does that create a scenario for two unlikely allies?
Microsoft has just been celebrating a successful October for IE9 on Windows 7, which has just surpassed Windows XP as the world’s most popular operating system. IE9 now has a share of about 22% of about 35% of the world’s Internet users, according to Microsoft and NetApplications. That sounds impressive, even if we have to note that IE9 has been introduced about 8 months ago and the slow conversion pace has not changed much from previous IE versions and is hurting Microsoft every month. A faster conversion rate would be necessary for Microsoft to stop the bleeding of users to Google’s Chrome, which seems to be happening at an accelerating tempo.
Overview: Chrome now has 1 in 4 users, 77% of IE users cannot view HTML5
(All data based on reporting from StatCounter) IE is down to 40.19% (-1.47 points) and has been dropping to about 38% on weekends. There is a reasonable chance that StatCounter will estimate IE market share next month below 40%, which would be a market share number Microsoft has not seen in about 15 years. Firefox was also slightly down by 0.4 points to 26.39%, a 33-month low. Chrome was up 1.38 points to 24.99%, while Safari continued to gain (+0.33 points to 5.93%) and Opera gained slightly to 1.81%.
On a browser version basis, IE8 ended the month with about 23.8% share, Chrome 14/15 with 22.8%, Firefox 7 with 12.7%, and IE9 with 9.6% share. Mozilla’s conversion rate is still impacted by a slow upgrade process from Firefox 3.6, which still holds more than 6% of the market, while Firefox 6 is at about 3.4%.
HTML5 browsers now represent about 60.7% of the entire browser usage, up from about 59.3% in September, according to StatCounter. IE8 remains the sore spot in this category: Even if Microsoft has completely dropped IE8 and is focusing on IE9/IE10 on Windows 7/8, web developers still have to deal with IE8 as well as 7% market share for IE6/7, for a total of more than 30% share of Microsoft browsers that do not support HTML5 apps. Even if Microsoft touts its IE9 success, the company has to recognize that 77% of its user base cannot view HTML5 content. These are hundreds of millions of users that are shut out of HTML5 apps and we still question Microsoft’s strategy not to extend IE9 down to Windows Vista and XP to support its HTML5 app market launch in Windows 8.
Analysis: Who can stop Chrome?
Numbers in statistics can be interpreted in different ways, but each new Chrome user is, in the end, a lost loser for Microsoft (and Mozilla). When those users upgrade to Windows 7 and 8, they are unlikely to come back and especially Microsoft will have to go to great lengths to make any dent in Chrome’s gains at this time. An aggressive IE marketing campaign launched in October has had no effect on Chrome market share so far.
In the first 10 months of this year, Microsoft and Mozilla lost a combined 10.7 points of market share (IE alone: 6.75 points). Chrome gained 10.1 points in the same time frame. The remainder was picked up by Safari (1.1 points), while Opera also lost close to 0.3 points share. Those 5 browsers, by the way, account for more than 99.3% of the browser market, according to StatCounter. So, if we assume for a moment that 94 of 100 users that Microsoft and Mozilla lose end up at Google, and Microsoft and Mozilla share the same problem, could there be a chance that Microsoft and Mozilla work as allies in a battle against Google?
Mozilla has been criticizing Google and its closed platform approach, and Mozilla has built a Firefox version with Bing as the default search engine for Microsoft. Of course, no one at Mozilla could ever admit that a collaboration with Microsoft could help the browser maker without upsetting its community base, but there is no denying that both Microsoft and Mozilla would be better off losing market share to each other rather than handing it to Google at this time.
Chrome has been growing, on a percentage basis, slower than it did last year. For example, the growth over a 6-month period was 53.7% in October of 2010, but only 36.6% in October of 2011. That has to do with the greater baseline of market share and a look at the absolute numbers shows that Google’s market share gains are, in fact, accelerating. In the first 10 months of 2010, Chrome gained 6.9 points of market share, in 2011 it has been more than 10 points. The 6-month gain was at just 4.3 points one year ago. In October 2011, Google set a new record with 6.7 points. The fact that Chrome market share gains are still accelerating should be a concern for both Mozilla and Microsoft.
At the current pace, Chrome will be surpassing Firefox market share this month. It already has passed Firefox over the past two weekends and we should see a permanent crossover in the second half of November, if Mozilla cannot stop Chrome. Our current forecast model suggest that, if we assume that Google’s gains and IE’s losses will continue, that Chrome will catch up with IE by July 2012.
HTML5: Is it time yet?
Ultimately, the current browser battle will come down to HTML5 capability and, hopefully, to a considerable baseline of feature support. Ultimately, the market will move to HTML5, driven by enthusiast and home users, followed by enterprise users. Ultimately, web developers will have to explore HTML5 opportunities.
Whether web developers will create HTML5 apps or not in the near future heavily depends on the users of their site and the usage of web browsers. With more than 60% share, we are hearing about more and more companies deploying experimental applications, especially as they are trying to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile environments. 2012 could become the inflection year that will provide the necessary arguments for companies to be more serious about HTML5 and carefully deploy beta apps. It is unlikely that we will see any serious, widely based general apps outside Google’s, Mozilla’s and Microsoft’s flagship applications that are tailored to work with their latest browsers within the next 6 – 8 months. However, Windows 8 will deliver much better reasons for developers to deliver HTML5 apps and 2013 will be much more likely to become the year HTML5 rises and Flash possibly dies. Enterprise adoption, will, depending on browser version deployment, follow with considerable distance.
For web developers, it is critical to jump on the HTML5 train now and understand its capabilities. HTML5 will be much more interesting in the second half of 2012 than it is right now.
Wolfgang Gruener in Business on November 01
No comments:
Post a Comment