The first half of 2013’s browser war is now over. June saw the third full month of IE10 availability on Windows 7, as well as the release of Firefox 22 and first full month of Chrome 27 availability. The latest market share numbers from Net Applications show Firefox was the biggest loser and Chrome was the biggest winner last month.
Between May and June, Internet Explorer gained 0.16 percentage points (from 55.99 percent to 56.15 percent), Firefox lost a whopping 1.48 percentage points (from 20.63 percent to 19.15 percent), and Chrome grabbed 1.43 percentage points (from 15.74 percent to 17.17 percent). Safari meanwhile gained 0.09 percentage points to 5.55 percent and Opera dipped 0.19 percentage points to 1.58 percent.
At 56.15 percent, Internet Explorer’s growth seems to be slowing. January was the first time the browser went back above the 55 percent mark, while the next few months have shown it won’t be losing that crown anytime soon.
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At 13.52 percent in June, IE10 has gained more market share (4.26 percent) in the third month of availability on Windows 7 than in the first and second. As a result, IE9 has lost a solid 3.68 percentage points (its biggest loss ever), falling to 11.71 percent, and has even managed to fall below IE10. Soon IE11 will be doing the same thing, given that it will be available for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.
IE8 meanwhile dipped 0.32 percentage points, but it’s still the world’s most popular browser at 22.67 percent. The real tragedy here is that this won’t be changing anytime soon: IE10 is mainly stealing share from IE9 on Windows 7, since Windows XP users can’t upgrade past IE8.
IE7 was down 0.09 percentage points to 1.69 percent and IE6 somehow managed to gain 0.10 percentage points to 6.13 percent. Everyone can’t wait for it to fall below the 5 percent mark, but that won’t happen till sometime later this year (and China is delaying things).
At 19.15 percent, Firefox has lost all it has managed to accrue in 2013, back below its one-fifth-of-the-pie mark. Firefox 22 was not available for a full month, so it only managed to grab 1.46 percent share as Firefox 21 made some minor gains to 12.47 percent. All other versions were down: Firefox 20 fell 9.69 points, Firefox 19 lost 0.19 points, and Firefox 17 dipped 0.03 points.
At 17.17 percent, Chrome has managed to recover quite a bit from its 21-month low in May. Chrome 27 grabbed 10.10 additional percentage points as all other versions barely budged: Chrome 26, Chrome 25, Chrome 24, and Chrome 23. This month has given new spark to the notion that Chrome could surpass Firefox this year.
Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than page views.
Nevertheless, for June 2013, StatCounter listed Chrome as first with 42.68 percent market share, IE in second with 25.54 percent, Firefox in third with 20.01 percent, Safari with 8.39 percent, and Opera with 1.03 percent. The only part everyone agrees on is that Safari and Opera are not in the top three.
See also – Windows 8 now up to 5.10% market share as it finally passes Windows Vista
Top Image Credit: Hugo Humberto Plácido da Silva
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