Chrome ended 2011 with 42.50% market share gain for the year and the
highest monthly market share growth in its history, according to data
released by StatCounter. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the only
browser to lose market share, but slightly slowed its losses over 2010.
Firefox had a tough year with a loss that more than quadrupled over
2010.
Data: StatCounter versus Net Applications
Both analytics firms typically show the same trend in their charts,
but publish substantially different market share estimates. Due to the
greater data set and more substantial background how the data is
collected, we use StatCounter’s data for our analysis. Please keep in
mind that there are numerous browsers stats collection services, all of
which publish different numbers. Take the exact numbers with a grain of
salt, but the general trend is usually similar or the same across all
those services.
Both StatCounter and Net Applications still list IE as the leading
browser, with 38.65% and 51.87% share, respectively. In both cases, IE
share declined substantially over November. Chrome now stands at 27.27%
at StatCounter and at 19.11% at Net Applications, Both numbers reflect
considerable gains. Firefox dropped to 21.83% in Net Applications’
charts, but was about flat in StatCounter’s estimate with 25.27%. Both
Safari and Opera remain insignificant in the greater picture of the
browser landscape and their impact on market penetration.
1. IE
IE market share fell from 40.63% to 38.65%, which was the first drop
below 40% in more than 13 years for the browser as far as we are aware
and the sharpest loss in absolute points in 24 months – and highest loss
for IE on a percentage basis in the history of the browser, based on
StatCounter data. Contributing to the stronger than average loss was the
ending of an advertising campaign that pushed IE higher in November as
well as a holiday season that generally favors Firefox and Chrome as the
more popular browsers for home users. For the entire year, IE lost 7.35
points, which is an improvement over the 8.31 point loss for 2010.
While Microsoft is far from halting IE’s decline, it appears as if the
company may have gone through a valley and may be able to have an
opportunity contain the drop in market share this year.
According to Net Applications, IE9 has a little over 25% market share
on Windows 7 PCs worldwide and surpassed IE8 share on Windows 7 with
almost 35% in December. However, IE9 does not play a leading role across
all operating systems and has only 11.48% market share in Net
Applications’ charts and 12.09% in StatCounter’s version. For Microsoft,
however, adoption of IE9 in Windows 7 is critical globally and will
enable the company to build a much stronger position with its browser
when Windows 8 is released and a silent update process is rolled out for
the browser in the coming months. For HTML5 developers, Chrome is the
more significant browser at this time, as it trumps IE9 market share in
both NetApplications’ and StatCounter’s charts, if all operating systems
are considered.
2. Chrome
Chrome and Firefox user bases remind me somewhat of the rivalry
between AMD and Intel or Nvidia and ATI a few years ago. There is quite a
bit of dynamic going on and there is little doubt that the enthusiasm
for these browsers drives the development in a similar way as it drove
the passion for processors and graphics cards. With Chrome approaching
Firefox share in NetApplications’ data and now being 2 points ahead of
Firefox in StatCounter’s estimate, we are now clearly in the two-horse
race we predicted one year ago. Chrome carries the mindshare, is
supported by powerful advertising on the web and on the TV, and features
a rock solid development process that delivers new browser versions
like Toyota is cranking out new Corollas. It’s a perfect machine that
can, conceivably, only fail if Google screws up. Chrome gained 11.59
points of market share in 2011, which is more than the 8.81 points it
gained in 2010 and more the 4.07 points it gained in 2009, according to
StatCounter. At this time, the market share gains are still
accelerating, as Chrome gained 6.62 points in the second half of 2011
alone. That increase is likely to continue as Chrome is now trending
toward 28% share in StatCounter’s charts.
3. Firefox
Firefox had a difficult year that began with a delayed rollout of
Firefox 4, the introduction of a rapid release cycle that is not yet
working as Mozilla imagined it and Google and Microsoft are playing a
much rougher game that has caught Firefox in the center of the firing
line. At 25.27% share, Firefox lost 5.41 points or 21.4% of its market
share over the past 12 months. The released data indicates that all of
that share went to Google’s Chrome, which is, at this time, a one-way
street, as Firefox does not offer a simple way to import bookmarks and
browsing data from Chrome. Firefox lost market share in 10 out of 12
months, but showed stabilization of market share in December. We don’t
know if that was a blip, as Firefox dropped to as low as 24% over the
past few days in StatCounter’s charts.
2012 Forecast
The browser landscape can change quickly, but we also know that
substantially changes in the market trend are unlikely to incur
immediately. Trends evolve and either worsen or improve for a particular
developer over a period of 6 to 8 months. Based on the historic data as
well as product roadmaps we currently have available we believe that
browser presences will continue the 2011 trend.
1. IE will continue to drop and fall below Chrome in August or
September 2012 in StatCounter’s charts. IE’s losses will soften an
stabilize when the silent update process is rolled out and Windows 8 is
introduced and achieves at least moderate success. If Windows 8 fails,
IE is likely to enter another phase of decline and could fall near 30%
market share by the end of 2012.
2. Chrome will continue to climb and meet IE at about 34% share.
Chrome’s success will increasingly rely on advertising as well as a
success of Chrome OS. If Windows 8 has a successful launch and Microsoft
is able to market IE9 and IE10 along with it, Chrome could hit a limit
for market share growth at about 36%. This estimate is based on a
continued trend of 2011.
3. Firefox is the interesting variable in this game that could either
impact Chrome or IE growth. In a best case scenario, Mozilla will be
able to leverage its newfound wealth from Google, hire developers and
streamline its rapid release process and avoid further feature delays
and roll out Boot2Gecko on time. If that is the case, we believe that
Mozilla has a good case to slow down the decline, stabilize at about 22 –
23%market share and grow from there. In a worst case, the delays will
continue and accelerate as Microsoft and Google are going after more
market share and Mozilla could find itself below 20% share by the end of
this year.
Wolfgang Gruener in Business Products on January 01
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