Apple's Safari showing major growth amongst browsers
The popularity of Apple Computer's Safari Web browser continues to grow at a noticeable pace this year, with recent market share figures pointing to an over 75 percent increase in usage over the past twelve months.
Although it maintains its standing as the No. 3 browser on the Internet, a recent market share report by Net Applications shows Apple's WebKit-based Safari to have garnered a 3.19 percent share in March, an increase of 1.81 percent from last year.
During the same time period, Microsoft's Internet Explorer saw its market share slip over 3 percent, from 88 percent down to 84.70 percent. FireFox -- the only other browser to succeed Safari in the rankings -- appears to have benefitted the greatest from Explorer's slump, posting a near 3 percent gain to 10.05 percent market share, up from 7.38 percent a year ago.
When Safari's 3.19 percent share is broken down into specific versions, the Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" version of the Apple browser represented a 1.14 percent share, while the Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" version accounted for 1.94 percent. Safari users running Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" account for just 0.10 percent of Internet traffic.
Comments made by Safari software engineers imply that the browser's market share should continue to post gains this year, especially as WebKit-based browsers start hitting other platforms like Nokia?s S60.
The new browser for the S60 enables a full Web browsing experience on mobile devices, with wide support of industry standards including W3C's HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 1, 2, & 3 (partially), DOM 1, 2, SVG-Tiny, and Web standards such as, ECMAScript, Netscape style plug-ins such as Flash Lite and audio.
The same market share report noted above also shows that Apple's Mac OS X operation system is slowly gaining popularity amongst Internet users. From April 2005 to March 2006, users of the Apple OS on the Net increase in share by over 0.75 percent, from 3.52 percent to 4.29 percent.
Safari (Tiger) Market Share Gains. Credits: Net Applications
Although it maintains its standing as the No. 3 browser on the Internet, a recent market share report by Net Applications shows Apple's WebKit-based Safari to have garnered a 3.19 percent share in March, an increase of 1.81 percent from last year.
During the same time period, Microsoft's Internet Explorer saw its market share slip over 3 percent, from 88 percent down to 84.70 percent. FireFox -- the only other browser to succeed Safari in the rankings -- appears to have benefitted the greatest from Explorer's slump, posting a near 3 percent gain to 10.05 percent market share, up from 7.38 percent a year ago.
When Safari's 3.19 percent share is broken down into specific versions, the Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" version of the Apple browser represented a 1.14 percent share, while the Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" version accounted for 1.94 percent. Safari users running Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" account for just 0.10 percent of Internet traffic.
Comments made by Safari software engineers imply that the browser's market share should continue to post gains this year, especially as WebKit-based browsers start hitting other platforms like Nokia?s S60.
The new browser for the S60 enables a full Web browsing experience on mobile devices, with wide support of industry standards including W3C's HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 1, 2, & 3 (partially), DOM 1, 2, SVG-Tiny, and Web standards such as, ECMAScript, Netscape style plug-ins such as Flash Lite and audio.
The same market share report noted above also shows that Apple's Mac OS X operation system is slowly gaining popularity amongst Internet users. From April 2005 to March 2006, users of the Apple OS on the Net increase in share by over 0.75 percent, from 3.52 percent to 4.29 percent.
Safari (Tiger) Market Share Gains. Credits: Net Applications
Comments
a) Apple is gaining market share
or
b) Mac users are switching from Internet Explorer/Firefox to Safari
Most likely it is both, but how is the ration a to b?
rhetorical question - no response needed
Originally posted by Robin Hood
I hope there are no Mac users left still using Internet Exploder.
I wish that no humans anywhere on earth would have ever used it.
DOWN WITH IE 4EVAR!
safari still needs more support.
But I have no need for it--I just don't seem to run across sites that Safari can't handle. (And I don't spoof browsers either.) I'll stick with Safari because it's compact and efficient for my needs--but I do like the intra-page search in Firefox.
Originally posted by fabsgwu
Google must really hate Safari because it doesn't work with Google Calendar. Hopefully they will fix that (and add iCal integration?) soon!
The problem, as I understand it, is that Safari does not have the advanced tools necessary to do all the fancy tricks that AJAX-enabled websites are able to do.
Yes, it would be great if it supported Safari. (They have a slightly crippled version of GMail that supports Safari.) But it would be even nicer if Apple added all the necessary funtionality to Safari.
:d
Originally posted by Robin Hood
I hope there are no Mac users left still using Internet Exploder.
Nordea in Denmark only supports IE on the Mac for their online bank. (Though Firefox 1.0-1.0.7 also works, while 1.5+ doesnt! )
For example imagine how skewed it would be if it was Appleinsider reporting their usage stats.
Many Safari users have the debug menu installed and are setting User Agent to IE Win/Firefox/etc. in order to obtain full functionality at non-standard sites.
The actual Safari figure probably doesn't include those spoofing as a less appealing browser.
Originally posted by dak splunder
The problem, as I understand it, is that Safari does not have the advanced tools necessary to do all the fancy tricks that AJAX-enabled websites are able to do.
Yes, it would be great if it supported Safari. (They have a slightly crippled version of GMail that supports Safari.) But it would be even nicer if Apple added all the necessary funtionality to Safari.
:d
Well that is definitely not the case. Safari can handle XMLHttpRequest. How do you think most dashboard widgets work? iWeb also uses AJAX for the slideshows. Safari certainly has the "advanced tools" that are necessary for AJAX.
Originally posted by nagromme
I just don't seem to run across sites that Safari can't handle.
Same here.
One problem with Safari that I haven't solved yet is for a friend who can't use it with CompuServe (go ahead and laugh; I do). It goes into some wonky JavaScript loop during login and eventually lands on some error page. No plugins or other stuff that might interfere with it. I later replicated it on my system using an AIM account, which made it particularly puzzling since I couldn't imagine such a seemingly obvious problem being a general one ...
Hmm, took a interrupt to try it now and it seems to be working even though I'm pretty sure I'd checked again it after installing 10.4.6. I'll have to give me friend a call and see if it's fixed for him, too. That way he wouldn't have to keep using Firefox only for reading CompuServe mail when he'd rather just be using Safari.
Originally posted by Robin Hood
I hope there are no Mac users left still using Internet Exploder.
Unfortunately, I still have to if I want to check my 401k plan online. It only works with IE. That really burns me.