WebKit browsers catching up to Firefox (updated)

 

While Firefox is having trouble surpassing Internet Explorer’s market share in the browser wars, it looks like it has another competitor right at its heels – browsers that run the WebKit web page renderer, in the form of Google Chrome and Apple Safari. According to the latest stats from StatCounter, Internet Explorer is leading the race with 43.87% of the market share, while Firefox comes in second with 29.29%. Chrome comes in third with 19.36%, and Safari fourth with 5.01%. But Chrome and Safari combined (they’re both WebKit browsers) make up 24.37% – less than 5% away from Firefox’s position.

Judging by the growth of the browsers, over the past year, it looks like WebKit is growing very well. Internet Explorer has dropped from 52.68% to 43.87% since last July. In the same period, Firefox dropped a little from 30.69% to 29.29% while Chrome and Safari both grew from 9.88% to 19.36% and 4.09% to 5.01% respectively. At this rate, it looks like the WebKit-based browsers, especially Chrome, are on their way to dominating the market.

While there’s no conclusive reason to explain why Firefox’s share hasn’t been growing, we can say that Google’s heavy advertising of its Chrome browser has been pretty effective in garnering more users, and it is also one of the latest browsers to enter the market, and as we all know, people love trying new things. Well, regardless of what browsers we end up using, as long as they support modern technologies like HTML5, it really shouldn’t be a problem. Which web browsers do you use on a daily basis, and why do you prefer it?

Updated (1.47pm PT): previous figures were wrong – thanks to Fire Rhino X for pointing it out.

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: Chrome, Firefox, internet, internet explorer, market share, safari, web browser, webkit