Sephone State of the Browser: June 2010
Today we continue our twice-yearly look at browser market shares on Sephone sites. Web developers use statistics about browser statistics to decide what features are safe to include on the sites they build; newer browsers (like IE8, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome) support many more features than older browsers (like IE7 and, infamously, IE6).
Here’s what our Google Analytics reports showed for six of our most-visited sites in real estate, tourism, news, education, and other markets:
It’s been another eventful period for browsers. The largest shift we saw in the first half of the year was a continued adoption of Internet Explorer 8, most likely due to upgrades from previous versions of IE (6 and 7). The market shares of those versions dropped across the board. IE 7’s share now ranges between 16.7 and 21.7%; IE 6 has dropped to between 4.7 and 8.6% (last December, it ranged from 7.0 – 10.3%; a year ago, 15.3 – 17.1%).
The percentage of users on Firefox either dropped or remained constant over the last six months on every site we surveyed. That’s likely due to gains by the WebKit family of browsers. There were modest Safari increases on most sites (Safari includes browsing on iPhones, iPods, and iPads), but the real story is Chrome. Google’s advertising campaign seems to have sparked some interest, and its browser share leapt around 50% over the last six months on some sites.
We posted these links back in December, but we think they’re important. We’ve previously introduced each of the major browsers and have explained our position 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, or read our reports of traffic from December 2009 and June 2009.
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 June 2010 show percentages of traffic between June 1 and 30, 2010.
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 |
| June 2010 | 35.0% | 19.3% | 5.4% | <0.1% | 21.9% | 12.6% | 5.1% | 0.1% |
| 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% |
| Dec. 2008 | 0.4% | 54.3% | 16.3% | 0.1% | 22.0% | 5.8% | 0.5% | 0.2% |
| 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 |
| June 2010 | 42.2% | 16.7% | 5.8% | <0.1% | 20.4% | 9.2% | 3.6% | 0.2% |
| 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% |
| Dec. 2008 | 0.7% | 51.7% | 21.8% | 0.3% | 19.4% | 5.2% | 0.4% | 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 |
| June 2010 | 42.1% | 18.4% | 4.7% | <0.1% | 22.3% | 7.3% | 3.9% | 0.2% |
| 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% |
| Dec. 2008 | 0.8% | 52.5% | 22.8% | 0.1% | 18.7% | 3.8% | 0.5% | 0.2% |
| 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 |
| June 2010 | 40.5% | 21.7% | 7.6% | <0.1% | 18.3% | 8.3% | 3.1% | 0.2% |
| Dec. 2009 | 36.1% | 23.4% | 7.2% | 0.0% | 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% |
| Dec. 2008 | 0.7% | 56.9% | 18.3% | <0.1% | 14.9% | 7.8% | 0.3% | 0.6% |
| 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 |
| June 2010 | 41.8% | 20.9% | 6.7% | <0.1% | 17.5% | 10.2% | 2.3% | 0.1% |
| 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% |
| Dec. 2008 | 0.9% | 51.9% | 24.3% | 0.2% | 14.8% | 7.1% | 0.3% | 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 |
| June 2010 | 38.5% | 16.7% | 8.6% | 0.0% | 21.3% | 9.8% | 4.3% | 0.2% |
| 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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IE8 has some bugs too although it is more stable than IE7 and IE6,,.
Comment by Welder work — August 16, 2010 @ 12:00 am