Safari has 1B users around the world, still lags far behind Chrome's market share

Posted:
in iOS edited May 2022
Apple's Safari is now being used by more than 1 billion users around the world, but the milestone was likely hit much earlier than the report claims.




Safari has enjoyed a position of being the default system browser for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users, and that has enabled it to get a sizable user base over time. It is now claimed that the total number of Safari users has gone above 1 billion.

According to AtlasVPN's research, approximately 1,006,232,879 internet users employ Safari for their browsing, which makes it only the second browser in current use to have a user base measurable in the billions.

However, there is a lot of wiggle room for whether this is accurate, and if Safari already managed to get 1 billion users in the past.




AtlasVPN's method for working out the user count was to take the Internet World Stats internet user metric, and to combine them with the market share of Safari in April, as determined by GlobalStats. As the Internet World Stats data dates back to December 31, 2021, this may not necessarily be as accurate a combined metric as intended.

Using the system, Chrome has over 3.3 billion users, with Edge at 212.7 million, Firefox at 179 million, and "Samsung Internet" at 149.7 million. Proportionately, the numbers are accurate, but its not clear if the total number of users are.

If calculated for earlier months, Apple would've had a more substantial 1.042 billion users in January, using the same math.

In May, it was discovered that Safari had dropped from the second most used desktop browser in the world to third place, with GlobalStats data showing Microsoft's Edge browser had narrowly overtaken Apple's version.

Read on AppleInsider
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 27
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,267member
    So what. People can continue to use Google's garbage but that doesn't mean it's actually any better than anything else. The embarrassment on this chart is Microsoft's Edge browser. We all know there are more Android phones around the world so it's understandable there will be more Chrome users. The problem with using Chrome on a Mac is it still sucks. My opinion, you can have yours.
    williamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 27
    leavingthebiggleavingthebigg Posts: 1,291member
    I suspect the original title of this article was too pro-Apple so it got edited. The edited title doesn’t sync up with the content of the article. Oh well, on to the next article. 
    michelb76watto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 27
    22july201322july2013 Posts: 3,630member
    A lot of people use Chrome, Safari or Edge because it's the default browser for some device. If you removed all the people who were using default browsers, which browser would be the most popular then?
    rob53watto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 27
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,846member
    It would be nice if Apple improved Safari so it rendered pages reliably. I keep thinking of going back to FF just because of the bugs. I haven’t, it’s on everything I own and switching would be a PITA, but it’s seriously annoying.
  • Reply 5 of 27
    lorca2770lorca2770 Posts: 72member
    Sad that there is not Safari for PC, then, it would be different
    williamlondon
  • Reply 6 of 27
    baka-dubbsbaka-dubbs Posts: 177member
    lorca2770 said:
    Sad that there is not Safari for PC, then, it would be different
    Safari used to be available for PC, however support for it ended due to "lack of interest" around 2012.  It had a marginal market share in the PC browser space.

    michelb76watto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 27
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,267member
    DAalseth said:
    It would be nice if Apple improved Safari so it rendered pages reliably. I keep thinking of going back to FF just because of the bugs. I haven’t, it’s on everything I own and switching would be a PITA, but it’s seriously annoying.
    It would also be nice if web developers actually tested their pages on multiple browsers along with using coding that isn’t specific to a specific browser. 
    JanNLwatto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 27
    I have to say, while Safari for iPad is not my favorite, it is the best. Syncing with iCloud messed up my Windows Firefox bookmarks. All would be fine if I had a Mac, but I don't. I would use Safari on my Android tablet if possible. Windows too. Then I could sync everything. So my bookmarks are only able to sync on Firefox and Chrome. Opera became too unstable and I've stopped using it.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 9 of 27
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,385member
    lorca2770 said:
    Sad that there is not Safari for PC, then, it would be different
    I did try to use it on a Windows machine back a decade ago, but it was not a pleasant experience. 
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 10 of 27
    michelb76michelb76 Posts: 658member
    rob53 said:
    So what. People can continue to use Google's garbage but that doesn't mean it's actually any better than anything else. The embarrassment on this chart is Microsoft's Edge browser. We all know there are more Android phones around the world so it's understandable there will be more Chrome users. The problem with using Chrome on a Mac is it still sucks. My opinion, you can have yours.
     The embarrassment on this chart is mobile Safari and it's lack of support for a lot of things, holding the mobile web back. It's gotten a bit better, but it's still the new IE.
    neoncatwilliamlondon
  • Reply 11 of 27
    I wonder how many of those are users who have no choice because they use iOS?
    lorca2770williamlondon
  • Reply 12 of 27
    slow n easyslow n easy Posts: 362member
    I wonder how many of those are users who have no choice because they use iOS?
    There is a choice. You can download Chrome on iOS.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 13 of 27
    omasouomasou Posts: 606member
    Well that's 1B less Chrome users.

    Not sure I understand all the love for Chrome. I don't feel that it's particularly better on Windows or Mac.

    As for lack of support or poor past experience that wasn't so much related to the browser as it was to lazy developers. In the past it was "well IE is the standard" so developers only coded and tested toward it. Same story today but w/Chrome.

    What is surprising is the Edge numbers. Besides the obvious lack of mobile users I read the numbers as a significant lack of Windows users and/or users who upgraded from older Windows OS and IE.  
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 27
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,385member
    omasou said:
    Well that's 1B less Chrome users.

    Not sure I understand all the love for Chrome. I don't feel that it's particularly better on Windows or Mac.

    As for lack of support or poor past experience that wasn't so much related to the browser as it was to lazy developers. In the past it was "well IE is the standard" so developers only coded and tested toward it. Same story today but w/Chrome.

    What is surprising is the Edge numbers. Besides the obvious lack of mobile users I read the numbers as a significant lack of Windows users and/or users who upgraded from older Windows OS and IE.  
    MS is certainly trying. When updating an existing machine to Win11 It uses a bit of trickery to get you to agree to Edge as the default browser. Even if you decline, you best pay attention to the services that MS has already checked-marked for you to default to the Edge browser. They do not make it easy, tho of course there's no requirement that they do. Microsoft is very aggressive at finagling the user into agreeing that all MS services, photos/cloud/browser, etc, will be defaults.

    Frankly, I'm very surprised that Edge has such a low market share considering the effort MS goes to. 
    edited May 2022 muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 15 of 27
    rotateleftbyterotateleftbyte Posts: 1,630member
    So? I don't care. In my opinion, anything that originates inside the Chocolate Factory should be regarded as malware.
    That's why I block as much of Google at my firewall as I can.
    williamlondonwatto_cobra
  • Reply 16 of 27
    tjwolftjwolf Posts: 424member
    michelb76 said:
    rob53 said:
    So what. People can continue to use Google's garbage but that doesn't mean it's actually any better than anything else. The embarrassment on this chart is Microsoft's Edge browser. We all know there are more Android phones around the world so it's understandable there will be more Chrome users. The problem with using Chrome on a Mac is it still sucks. My opinion, you can have yours.
     The embarrassment on this chart is mobile Safari and it's lack of support for a lot of things, holding the mobile web back. It's gotten a bit better, but it's still the new IE.
    Can you give a specific example?  I know Safari lacks support for some APIs that Google is touting (and would benefit from in their adoption), but am not aware of any actual *standards* Safari doesn't support.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 17 of 27
    tjwolftjwolf Posts: 424member
    "Safari has enjoyed a position of being the default system browser for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users, and that has enabled it to get a sizable user base over time" - funny how the article mentions this for Safari, but is mum on the fact that the same holds for Chrome in the Android space - a market that is 3-4x the size of iOS.  And given that, is it really surprising that Google Chrome has 3x the number of users?  If anything, Apple's 1B users looks pretty good in comparison when you consider Safari is not available on Android but the reverse is not true.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 18 of 27
    baka-dubbsbaka-dubbs Posts: 177member
    I wonder how many of those are users who have no choice because they use iOS?
    There is a choice. You can download Chrome on iOS.
    Chrome on iOS is not Chromium based, its Webkit based.  Apple requires other browsers to use the Webkit rendering engine, they do not allow other rendering engines on iOS(IE, not chromium based browsers).  So essentially, your using a skinned version of Safari if you opt into chrome.
    muthuk_vanalingamgatorguywatto_cobra
  • Reply 19 of 27
    I think it's pretty embarrassing that at 1 billion users they still can't implement an ES2018 feature that Google Engineer Mathias Bynens gave them a head up about in 2017! Going on 5 years and they still haven't implemented RegExp lookbehind assertions: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174931 BTW - I was trying to use the markup tools on this post and they don't seem to be working... of course I _am_ using Safari 🤷
  • Reply 20 of 27
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,846member
    I wonder how many of those are users who have no choice because they use iOS?
    There is a choice. You can download Chrome on iOS.
    Edge is also available as is Firefox, and Opera.
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