It’s been a few months since we last wrote about the browser and operating system stats, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been on our minds. In fact the market has changed a little bit since our last report in July 2008. Google released their own browser, Apple released new MacBook computers, and beta versions of the next generation browsers have had a few updates. So how has all of this affected the stats?
According to Net Applications the stats haven’t changed all that much over the last few months, but these things don’t happen overnight. Firefox continues to move on up inching closer to 20% of the browser market share while Google Chrome is struggling to capture a mere 1% of the market. Here’s a quick overview before we break it down further:
–Web Browsers–
Google Chrome sparked a lot of excitement when it was first released, and with over 500 votes already in our poll it looks like only 10% of you have chosen to make it your primary browser. That’s actually not a bad percentage, but when taking into account the less tech-savvy crowd Chrome isn’t even trumping Opera in terms of market share:
| September 2008 | October 2008 | Change | |
| Internet Explorer | 71.52% | 71.27% | -0.25% |
| Firefox | 19.46% | 19.97% | +0.51% |
| Safari | 6.65% | 6.57% | -0.08% |
| Opera | 0.69% | 0.75% | +0.06% |
| Chrome | 0.78% | 0.74% | -0.04% |
| Netscape | 0.63% | 0.45% | -0.18% |
| Mozilla | 0.09% | 0.09% | 0.00% |
| Opera Mini | 0.05% | 0.06% | +0.01% |
| Playstation | 0.03% | 0.03% | 0.00% |
–Operating Systems–
There might be a lot of people refusing to upgrade to Vista, but that’s not stopping some of you. Vista’s market share continues to steadily grow as it becomes one of the few operating systems to squeak out a positive change from September to October.
| September 2008 | October 2008 | Change | |
| Windows XP | 68.67% | 68.11% | -0.56% |
| Windows Vista | 18.33% | 19.29% | +0.96% |
| Mac – Intel | 5.80% | 5.94% | +0.14% |
| Mac OS | 2.43% | 2.27% | -0.16% |
| Windows 2000 | 1.89% | 1.72% | -0.17% |
| Windows NT | 0.80% | 0.78% | -0.02% |
| Linux | 0.91% | 0.71% | -0.20% |
| iPhone | 0.32% | 0.33% | +0.01% |
| Windows 98 | 0.34% | 0.31% | -0.03% |
| Windows ME | 0.19% | 0.18% | -0.01% |
Did you also notice how the iPhone is now beating Windows 98? That means more people are using the iPhone to surf the Internet than PC’s running Windows 98. Crazy!
it hurts seeing how low is Opera… the OS X of browsers
I don’t believe people are actively upgrading to Vista, more a case of what OS has been preinstalled.
What about the browsers of the rest of the mobile phones? I’m sure those numbers beat the Intel Macs market share
I hate the Apple hype.
How much of that linux share is Ubuntu, and how much is all those other distros?
I would definitely love to see Opera gain some momentum going forward, but it just doesn’t seem like that is going to happen. I think people still look at them as being the company that charged for their browser back in the day, well, you could have gone with their ad-supported version as well.
Of course that is the case… I don’t even know of many people who went out and bought XP when it was released. They just waited to get it until it came on a new computer. Regardless it does show that people are moving forward and sticking with Vista.
There are obviously other phones with more dominant operating systems, but these stats indicate the operating systems used most for web browsing.
Unfortunately they don’t break down the Linux stats anymore than that.
“That means more people are using the iPhone to surf the Internet than PC’s running Windows 98. Crazy. ”
Is it really crazy? I mean really…98 is really outdated. People are using XP and Vista. The iPhone is also pretty popular…so I really don’t find it crazy that the iPhone is beating 98, not crazy at all.
Maybe are Windows 98 and Me (both down) upgrading to Vista rather than to XP with new computer ?
Concerning Firefox, its use is over 31% in Europe/09-2008 according to XiTi Monitor ([xitimonitor.com]) and I think the USA is among the bottom-line Firefox use worldwide, quite amazingly (or not ?)
Always amazing, these stats.
Being since years an Opera user, i’d like to see its use increase, too. At least, more than its +0.06%.
Also, i thought Vista a bit higher, and even didn’t figure out W. 98 and Me could have this score today.
iPhone score, on the other hand, is not so amazing when thinking.
I’m glad Firefox is advancing in big strides. It’s barely reaching the elusive landmark. Internet Explorer is so perplex of what’s going on the Internet, it can’t retain its users.
I love those charts. Great work Ryan!
I believe these stats are taken from worldwide usage. The sites they pull the stats from might be predominantly U.S. based, but I don’t think they exclude traffic from individuals outside the U.S. I wonder what the U.S. market share actually is. It’s too bad none of these companies release accurate stats about their browsers.
That is very true, but to see a mobile browser finally get used so much on the Internet that it shows up in the stats is awesome.
I think the Linux market share went down because between July and Sept. Canonical update the user agent in Ubuntu to reflect Ubuntu and not Linux. So all the 8 Million users (Mark’s word not mine) are giving out Ubuntu as the user agent and not Linux.
Congrats to Firefox, and I can’t wait to see the market share of Fennec when that comes out.
Will be looking forward to Ryan’s update in a couple of months.
Hopefully it won’t be that long… I’d like to do them every month but they’ve been slipping my mind.
I don’t find it crazy that the iphone is beating 98. I do find it crazy that people are actually browsing on a.. what is it, 2″ by 3″ screen?
I don’t view a whole lot of full sites on the iPhone… most of what I view are sites that have been adapted to the iPhone’s screen. A good example of that is Google Reader.
97.79%, that where the shares adds up for the OS. So they are missing 2.21% of Linux users :p
No seriously, it’s clearly biased for small percentages.
Still using good ole Win95 with Opera, Netscape and occasionally IE. Not into checking email or browsing by phone, txt msging is turned off, not interested in spam. Would never use a tiny screen to surf the Web. But I believe that in Japan and one other country, the Web, video, etc… have been hot for yrs via cell phones. I’ll save my money instead.