Now that 2007 is almost over with news of Netscape's demise in just two months, and the major players in the browser wars are set in stong; Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Firefox 1.x.x & 2.x.x and Beta 2 version of Firefox 3, Opera 9.x, and Safari 3.x. Lets just see where the % point are for the major players.

Growth Chart



So as you can tell both browsers IE7 and FF2 started roughly the same, 24% for IE7 and 25% for Firefox 2, but interestingly enough they ended the year roughly the same but with firefox winning by 1% at 37% while IE takes a nice 36% in second place. now lets take a step back in history for a moment by clicking on the links

Browser Stats from 2002-2007

Heck its funny you actually see the demise of Netscape right there laugh.gif

As of November of 2007 the break down goes like this IE 56.2% and last year it was at 59.4%, and so it has lost 3.2% of the market in just one year.

As of November of 2007 Firefox has a 37.5% and last year it was at 32.9 which means that Mozilla as a whole gained 4.6% of th market since last year.

As for Opera and Safari they are tied at 1.8% apiece with Opera gaining .3% from 2006 and Safari 1.8% in its first year.

So what could this mean for the browser wars? Quite a lot actually Firefox 3 is almost ready to go full version early next year, which means Firefox 2 will take whats left of FireFox 1 usage and add to its own and on top of that take a nice chunk from whats left of IE5 and IE6 users. So which means Microsoft could lose a big chunk by the time IE 8 even hits beta version and possibly a larger chunk when it goes full versions. Now mind you I haven't taken in consideration of Opera and Safari just because they will only take a few points off of Microsoft's stock.

As for predictions we all know Safari won't be dying any time soon, although firefox has a nice chunk in the Mac Market, since Mac users can only use IE5, Safari on their computers (I used it sometimes). However, what will be in store for Opera in 2008. Sadly I look at their extensions and I wasn't impressed by them, but either way there are still loyal opera fans out there.

So as like 2006 and 2007, 2008 will be 3rd year of firefox domination in the sense that they will be gaining more users while Microsoft slowly loses theirs.

However, you can't rely on data from 1 or 2 site, and so I bring to your attention this little website with a somewhat more reasonable idea of the break down, and oddly enough that break down makes sense but either based on the information people have a more general idea how the browsers are doing during this nail biting war of theirs.

SOURCES

Site #1

Site #2

Site #3

Site #4

 

 

 


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