Browser Wars: 2012 in review
It has been an interesting year in the desktop browser space, with two different online market share statistics companies offering very different perspectives on the market.
The NetMarketshare index from NetApplications uses a metric that looks at the unique visitors to the websites it tracks and then weights it according to the number of Internet users in a country.
On the other hand, StatCounter uses just the raw page-views on the sites it tracks to determine the marketshare percentages on its site.
Over the course of 2012, NetMarketshare shows that Chrome and Firefox were neck-and-neck, but while Google’s browser came close it never overtook Firefox.
Internet Explorer remained the dominant browser throughout the year.
NetApplications worldwide desktop browser graph – 2012
StatCounter’s data paints a vastly different picture, with Chrome actually overtaking Microsoft Internet Explorer and leaving Firefox in the dust, having overtaken it at the end of 2011.
In South Africa there was also big movement in the desktop browser arena, according to StatCounter, with Chrome overtaking Firefox while Internet Explorer lost ground and Safari gained.
According to StatCounter both Firefox and Internet Explorer have been in steady decline throughout the year, while NetMarketshare suggests the opposite.
StatCounter worldwide desktop browser graph – 2012
Both Explorer and Firefox had higher percentages in November than they had in January while Chrome seemed to have lost a lot of ground between the start and end of the year.
One possible conclusion that can be drawn from the difference between Net Applications and StatCounter’s figures is that although there are more individual users of Internet Explorer, users of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browse more web pages.
Unfortunately this can’t be said with certainty as the two companies gather and analyse their own sets of data.
However, the browser usage statistics on MyBroadband are in line with this hypothesis that Internet Explorer has a far lower market share when measuring pageviews rather than unique users.
StatCounter South Africa desktop browser graph – 2012
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