Sephone State of the Browser: December 2009
Back in June of last year we published a report of browser market share for some of our most visible sites. As we explained then, these statistics are really helpful for web developers in order to find what people are using to view sites and, in turn, what technologies developers can use to create those sites.
It’s been six months, and we wanted to go back and look how the usage stats in December compared to those in June. As we did in our first report, we looked through our Google Analytics reports for six of the most-visited sites we developed and maintain in real estate, tourism, news, education, and other markets.
Here’s a look at the trends of browsers over the last six months:
And a look at market share by reporting period:
The past six months have seen an overall loss of market share for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and a gain across the board for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. In addition, Internet Explorer 8 usage more than doubled over the last six months on all of the six sites we surveyed. Safari’s spike in market share may be due to the popularity of iPhones, which run a mobile version of the browser. Google released a version of Chrome for Mac and Linux systems which may have contributed to its increase in usage in December. And web developers everywhere can rejoice: in our survey, the Internet Explorer 6 market share we found ranged from 7.0 – 10.3% as compared to 15.3 – 17.1% in June.
We’ve published an introduction to the major web browsers in the past as well as a post about our views on Internet Explorer 6 support. Please consider reading those posts for more information.
Read on to see the full report data with percentages and methods.
We collected data from each of six Google Analytics accounts for sites that we develop and maintain at Sephone. The figures represent the percentage of traffic over the month indicated; for example, reports from December 2009 show percentages of traffic between December 1 and 31, 2009.
The graph shown above is a simple average of each of the six figures shown below and does not represent the relative popularity of the six sites and the effects of that on the percentages.
| Site A | IE 8 | IE 7 | IE 6 | IE 5 | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Opera |
| Dec. 2009 | 22.6% | 29.6% | 7.0% | <0.1% | 23.8% | 12.5% | 3.5% | 0.1% |
| June 2009 | 9.4% | 45.4% | 15.3% | <0.1% | 21.4% | 6.7% | 1.3% | 0.3% |
| June 2008 | 49.6% | 27.9% | 0.1% | 17.9% | 4.2% | 0.2% | ||
| Site B | IE 8 | IE 7 | IE 6 | IE 5 | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Opera |
| Dec. 2009 | 30.6% | 26.5% | 10.0% | <0.1% | 21.5% | 8.5% | 1.9% | 0.2% |
| June 2009 | 13.8% | 43.6% | 15.5% | <0.1% | 19.6% | 5.7% | 1.1% | 0.2% |
| June 2008 | <0.1% | 52.9% | 27.5% | 0.2% | 15.2% | 3.5% | 0.2% | |
| Site C | IE 8 | IE 7 | IE 6 | IE 5 | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Opera |
| Dec. 2009 | 31.7% | 24.5% | 9.5% | <0.1% | 22.6% | 7.1% | 3.0% | 0.3% |
| June 2009 | 12.7% | 43.9% | 17.1% | 0.3% | 19.7% | 4.6% | 1.0% | 0.1% |
| June 2008 | 51.0% | 29.0% | 0.3% | 16.5% | 2.5% | 0.1% | ||
| Site E | IE 8 | IE 7 | IE 6 | IE 5 | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Opera |
| Dec. 2009 | 36.1% | 23.4% | 7.2% | 22.3% | 8.5% | 1.7% | 0.3% | |
| June 2009 | 11.1% | 49.0% | 17.0% | <0.1% | 15.6% | 6.1% | 0.8% | 0.2% |
| June 2008 | 55.2% | 27.8% | 0.3% | 11.3% | 4.4% | 0.3% | ||
| Site F | IE 8 | IE 7 | IE 6 | IE 5 | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Opera |
| Dec. 2009 | 30.0% | 31.2% | 10.3% | <0.1% | 17.5% | 9.1% | 1.2% | 0.3% |
| June 2009 | 12.2% | 45.9% | 15.7% | <0.1% | 16.9% | 8.0% | 0.9% | 0.1% |
| June 2008 | <0.1% | 50.4% | 28.3% | 0.4% | 13.1% | 6.9% | 0.9% | 0.2% |
| Site G | IE 8 | IE 7 | IE 6 | IE 5 | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Opera |
| Dec. 2009 | 26.9% | 23.3% | 9.9% | <0.1% | 24.7% | 11.4% | 2.8% | 0.2% |
| June 2009 | 11.7% | 39.8% | 16.1% | <0.1% | 22.4% | 8.1% | 1.2% | 0.1% |
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