Browser Wars: Usage stats for March 2012
The rise of Google Chrome appeared to continue unabated last month, with StatCounter reporting that the web browser generated more page views than Internet Explorer on Sunday, 18 March 2012.
StatCounter boss Aodhan Cullen said that people are choosing Chrome over Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on weekends, when they are free to choose which browser to use.
For the whole month of March, StatCounter reported that Internet Explorer still generated the most page views globally (34.81%), with Chrome not far behind (30.87%).
Firefox’s decline seems to have stabilised for the moment, while Safari continues to grow steadily.
Statistics from NetApplications paints a different picture, however.
NetApplications desktop browser stats - March 2012
NetApplications measures browser usage share based on unique visitors weighted by the number of Internet users in a country, whereas StatCounter reports raw pageviews.
We use StatCounter’s data in the tables and graphs below because they allow us to pull country-specific reports.
| StatCounter desktop browser stats: March 2012 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Browser | Worldwide | South Africa |
| Internet Explorer | 34.81% | 52.33% |
| Firefox | 24.98% | 19.91% |
| Chrome | 30.87% | 19.29% |
| Safari | 6.72% | 6.22% |
| Opera | 1.78% | 1.06% |
| Other | 0.84% | 1.19% |
StatCounter global desktop browser stats - 2012 March
StatCounter desktop browser stats for South Africa - March 2012
While NetApplications showed that Internet Explorer’s market share has been increasing since December 2011 with Chrome’s decreasing slightly, StatCounter’s results indicate the opposite.
It will be interesting to see whether this divergence in trends continues, or whether StatCounter’s pageview-based analytics will also start showing the same trend as NetApplications.
Closer to home, Chrome has yet to overtake Firefox in South Africa, but it is nipping at the heels of Mozilla’s browser.
The use of Apple’s Safari browser also appears to be growing in SA, with only Internet Explorer and Opera showing a decrease in usage share.
Comparing browsers by page views and unique visitors to MyBroadband tells an interesting story:
| MyBroadband browser usage stats: March 2012 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Browser | Visits | Pageviews |
| Chrome | 28.16% | 32.04% |
| Firefox | 26.38% | 31.51% |
| Internet Explorer | 29.72% | 24.72% |
| Safari | 8.42% | 6.37% |
| Opera | 1.79% | 1.90% |
| Other | 5.58% | 3.46% |
| Opera Mini | 2.46% | 1.67% |
| Android Browser | 1.38% | 0.85% |
Chrome users appear to view more pages than those that prefer Firefox, but more people also use Chrome on MyBroadband than Firefox.
Internet Explorer still commands more users than the other browsers, but generates the fewest page views of the big three.
Opera usage still seems to be oscillating about the same point, while Opera Mini usage has increased.
It’s also worth noting that the Android Browser has made the list of top 10 browsers overall on MyBroadband.
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