Apple's Safari showing major growth amongst browsers

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
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
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 35
    ak1808ak1808 Posts: 108member
    Is that because



    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?
  • Reply 2 of 35
    I hope there are no Mac users left still using Internet Exploder.
  • Reply 3 of 35
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    An innocent question: when they measure how much Macs vs. Windows PCs are used on the Internet, does malware-related traffic get counted?
  • Reply 4 of 35
    mugwumpmugwump Posts: 233member
    As an aside, the increase of the Mac OS in that final sentence is a 21% increase of marketshare. It's confusing to say .75 percentage gain.
  • Reply 5 of 35
    Yay! Now, how much larger of a share does Safari need before Google properly supports it for Gmail/Calendar?



    rhetorical question - no response needed
  • Reply 6 of 35
    Exactly how does the N60 using WebKit help Safari's marketshare?
  • Reply 7 of 35
    nathan22tnathan22t Posts: 317member
    Quote:

    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!
  • Reply 8 of 35
    ishawnishawn Posts: 364member
    Does that mean one day the amazing use of Gmail will be all through Safari. That's about the only reason I have Firefox now; is because I can chat and people don't have to download anything. I used to have Firefox for those few sites that don't accept what Safari's putting out but those are becoming fewer and farther in between.
  • Reply 9 of 35
    fabsgwufabsgwu Posts: 78member
    Google must really hate Safari because it doesn't work with Google Calendar. Hopefully they will fix that (and add iCal integration?) soon!
  • Reply 10 of 35
    elixirelixir Posts: 782member
    i'm enjoying safari right now on my macbook but i might still switch to firefox once it is intel native.





    safari still needs more support.
  • Reply 11 of 35
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    Firefox IS Intel native currently.



    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.
  • Reply 12 of 35
    Quote:

    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
  • Reply 13 of 35
    Quote:

    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! )
  • Reply 14 of 35
    ajmasajmas Posts: 597member
    I am actually curious to know how they get these stats, since if its usage statistics, then these will vary depending on the web site. Different web sites attract different types of customers, one set could contain a larger number of Mac users relative to another.



    For example imagine how skewed it would be if it was Appleinsider reporting their usage stats.
  • Reply 15 of 35
    there are some things that I really like about Firefox but its the .mac syncing and integration that keeps me using Safari. Its awesome to have your home, work and portable computers always up to date with the my latest bookmarks.
  • Reply 16 of 35
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    I would suspect the figures are actually underreporting Safari usage.



    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.



  • Reply 17 of 35
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    The best damn browser i've used. I'm not that fond of Firefox, I like Safari much more!
  • Reply 18 of 35
    Quote:

    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.
  • Reply 19 of 35
    sjksjk Posts: 603member
    Quote:

    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.
  • Reply 20 of 35
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Quote:

    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.
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