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Safari Gains, FireFox Tops 10% in March

Safari Gains, FireFox Tops 10% in March

by , 8:55 AM EDT, April 5th, 2006

Safari continued its slow upward climb as the number three Web browser for March, and Firefox hit a new milestone as it climbed up over ten percent. Safari's increase in browser market share was small, moving up to 3.19 percent from 3.13 percent. The Increase from Firefox was more noticeable as it moved up to 10.05 percent from February's 9.75 percent.

Statistics from Market Share show Microsoft's Internet Explorer continuing its year-long decline, dropping from 85.03 percent of the browser market in February down to 84.7 percent in March. Microsoft's Web browser is still the undisputed market share leader, but Safari holds the distinction of being the only single-platform browser with any significant piece of the browser market.

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Close Name:Guest
Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:39 am Subject: This Shows Market Share isn't the whole story

With Safari itself pulling slightly more than wha tfolks are saying Apple's marketshare is. Then adding in users like myself that use Firefox and not Safari or Explorer this shows that the install base of Apple is more than the market share reports we keep hearing.

Of course I run a couple of websites and about 12% of visitors are using Macs, and we are not tech oriented websites, so that myth has already been blown out of the water.


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Close Name:Guest
Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:50 am Subject: Distinction?

"...but Safari holds the distinction of being the only single-platform browser with any significant piece of the browser market."

Is this really a distinction? It sounds like a limitation. Isn't IE a single-platform browser since they have stopped supporting Macs?


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Close Name:Biff Posts: 1479 Joined: 08 Apr 2004
Wed Apr 05, 2006 12:22 pm Subject:

Quote
Guest wrote:
With Safari itself pulling slightly more than wha tfolks are saying Apple's marketshare is. Then adding in users like myself that use Firefox and not Safari or Explorer this shows that the install base of Apple is more than the market share reports we keep hearing.
Congratulations! You have just stumbled upon the difference between market share and install base!


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Close Name:Nookster Posts: 111 Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:15 pm Subject:

And we can only assume that the collaborative collators (horrible alliteration, yes) are reporting the browsers accurately, the other day a site I visited with Safari 2.0.3 confidently told me I was using Mozilla 5.0 or similar.


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Close Name:metavurt Posts: 163 Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:03 pm Subject: Re: Distinction?

Uh, short answer? No.

Internet Explorer has existed in multi-platform mode for a loooong time.

Safari has *never* existed on the PC side.

Earth to brain, earth to brain....


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Close Name:JonGl Posts: 113 Joined: 12 Jan 2006
Thu Apr 06, 2006 10:45 am Subject:

Quote
Biff wrote:
Congratulations! You have just stumbled upon the difference between market share and install base!


Now, if only the media would catch on to this.....

-Jon


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Close Name:JonGl Posts: 113 Joined: 12 Jan 2006
Thu Apr 06, 2006 10:48 am Subject:

Quote
Guest wrote:
"...but Safari holds the distinction of being the only single-platform browser with any significant piece of the browser market."

Is this really a distinction? It sounds like a limitation. Isn't IE a single-platform browser since they have stopped supporting Macs?


Snide comments aside, it may almost be, but it isn't yet. I know my family used IE until just a few weeks ago, when I finally upgraded them to OS X, and now they all use Safari (that's four more!), and I just switched from Firefox to Safari when I upgraded myself at the same time to Tiger. But in any case, IE is still used on Macs, and my guess is that the vast bulk of Macs still running OS 9 or earlier are using IE, as it's almost the only option. We never could get Netscape or Mozilla to work properly on our Macs, and IE's features really outshine the older versions of Mozilla/Netscape, so there is still a good number, I would suspect, of Macs using IE. Hey, even I launch it on occasion--mainly to see what I'm missing.

-Jon


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