评论
打印
News Commentary. Can we stop all the desktop browser market share talk? Microsoft's mobile browsing problems are much bigger.
Every few days, somebody writes something about Internet Explorer's declining marketshare. "OMG. Net Applications December data shows IE market share below 70 percent." Big hairy deal.
arrow.gifGOT A TIP OR RUMOR?
These numbers are somewhat meaningless, anyway, because they do the impossible: Add up to 100 percent. Browsers aren't a finite market. Analysts can calculate share based on, say, shipments of something. Ten manufacturers ship X number of widgets during Y time period; market share can be calculated based on how many widgets each manufacturer shipped.
The math doesn't apply to Web browsers, because the real measurement is usage. Who is using what, and people tend to use more than one browser. At best, Net Apps is measuring usage share, which doesn't reflect how many people are using more than one browser. That said, Microsoft's drop below 70 percent is worth noting, but the news is more that people continue to use IE and something else. Three things stand out from Net Apps data:
* Firefox isn't appreciably gaining as much share against Internet Explorer
* Apple's Safari is making modest gains, while Google Chrome ekes upwards
* The rush to convert from Internet Explorer 6 to IE 7 is largely over
According to Net Apps, Internet Explorer usage (market share, if you must insist) dropped to 69.77 percent in November. IE's decline continued in December to 68.15 percent. Maybe, but for the year, IE is still well above 70 percent. That said, Internet Explorer's monthly downward trend is clear—from 75.47 percent in January 2008.
Firefox continues to gain—from 16.98 percent share in January to 19.22 percent share in July to over 21 percent in December. But the bigger market share movers were Chrome and Safari. Google's browser went from 0 percent share in August to 1.04 percent share in December. Safari rose from 5.82 percent share in January to 7.93 percent share in December—that's up from 6.37 percent in August.
From January to December, browser market share/usage share changed:
* IE, down 7.32 percent
* Firefox, up 4.36 percent
* Safari, up 2.11 percent
* Chrome, up 1.04 percent
Add up the gainers and they total 7.53 percent market/usage share. Based on Net App numbers then, Chrome, Firefox and Safari gained the share lost by Internet Explorer. But the story isn't so simple as the data tells, because these numbers shouldn't total 100 percent and the browser market is considerably more fragmented than what these topline numbers indicate. Net Apps tracks about 40 different browsers. In December, Internet Explorer 8 (Beta 2, I presume) had greater market share than Chrome 1.0: 82 percent to 55 percent. That means that nearly half of all Chrome users used a beta version of the Google browser. For the year, IE 8 share was 23 percent compared to .03 percent for Chrome 1.0. browsers1208.jpgIE 7 still isn't gaining the way one would expect against IE 6, which I see as being a big part of Microsoft's browser usage problem. For the year, IE 7 share was 46.06 percent compared to 26.2 percent for IE 6.
Apple's share gains, while initially impressive, surprisingly aren't. Given Mac's market share gains, I would expect the browser numbers to be higher. I suspect two trends: Better Safari adoption than most people might expect on Windows and much less than expected on the Mac (where Firefox steals usage from Safari). Apple should worry about Google getting out a Chrome version for the Mac. Chrome will be the browser to watch in 2009. As my Google Watch colleague Clint Boulton so astutely observes, Google is using its Web services to push Chrome adoption.
All this said, something hugely important isn't reflected in the data: Mobile. Internet Explorer is a simply godawful mobile browser. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. November's Gizmodo mobile browser shoot-out was a hoot in explaining IE's failing grade:
Jesus Christ. This is a joke, right Microsoft? Hahaha. No really, this is the worst smartphone browser on the planet. It couldn't render its way out of an ASCII-art paper bag. It totally screwed up every single test page, except for Wikipedia, which it only mostly screwed up. Good luck navigating a page if you're granted the miraculous occurrence of it being rendered in a state that's usable. Grade: F-
The future platform that matters, the one where Microsoft doesn't have dominant browser share, is mobile. There, Apple and Google have two excellent WebKit-based mobile browsers. Microsoft has got less than nothing. Microsoft's desktop declines are interesting but not hugely significant.
Big deal. IE is losing ground on last century's dominant computing platform. What matters more is where IE isn't—and that's this century's dominant platform: Mobile. How about we dispense with this IE less-than-70-percent chatter and talk more about Microsoft's mobile crisis. Mozilla is months away from releasing mobile Firefox. Mobile Chrome and Safari already are rainmakers.
Increased adoption of mobile browsers should drive usage of their desktop counterparts, too. Unless Microsoft does something dramatic on mobiles, IE's mobile extinction is almost inevitable. Then it will be time to really talk about IE's desktop browser share declines.
