Chrome overtakes Safari

According to Net Applications Market Share service, the web browser statistics for December 2009 show Google's Chrome browser now ranks third in the market with a share of 4.63%, ahead of Apple's Safari with 4.46%. Net Applications say the undisputed market leader, with a 62.69% share, is still Microsoft's Internet Explorer in its various versions, followed by Mozilla's Firefox with 24.61%. Opera takes the fifth position with 2.4% of the share. Net Applications draws its statistical information from visitor data for 40,000 web sites world-wide, but, as with all aggregated statistics, the sample is not representative of all types of PC users.

Pie chart of browser market share

While, in absolute terms, the vast majority of web page views – according to Net Applications, over 98% – are still taking place on desktop PCs, the use of mobile devices to access web pages is rising at a steady pace. Their share rose from 1.19 to 1.42%, in visitor numbers from November to December. The lions share of the increase was taken by Android based smart phones with a 55% increase, followed by Blackberry devices (up 22%), iPhones (up 20%) and Symbian smart phones (up 19%).

(djwm)