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
Source: Net Applications

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)