Browser Trends May 2015: Can Microsoft Regain the Edge?

General Web Dev
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Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-may-2015-can-microsoft-regain-edge/
The browser market has been mostly static for a few months. Let’s check the latest figures from StatCounter?…

Worldwide Desktop & Tablet Browser Statistics, March to April 2015

The following table shows browser usage movements during the past month.

Worldwide Desktop & Tablet Browser Statistics, April 2014 to April 2015

The following table shows browser usage movements during the past twelve months:

(The tables show market share estimates for desktop browsers. The ‘change’ column is the absolute increase or decrease in market share. The ‘relative’ column indicates the proportional change, i.e. 8.8% of IE9 users switched browsers last month. There are several caveats so I recommend you read How Browser Market Share is Calculated and StatCounter vs NetMarketShare.)

It’s the usual story. Chrome had the biggest jump and now stands a fraction under 50% of the market. Firefox and Opera dropped a little, but the biggest loser was Safari. Both the Mac OS and iPad versions decreased but Apple is unlikely to be concerned given their recent $13.6 billion quarterly profits!

The only other browser to make a gain was IE. Talking of which…

Goodbye Internet Explorer, Hello Edge

We’ve known about Microsoft’s new browser for some time. It has now received an official name: Microsoft Edge.

Meh. I liked “Spartan”.

Does the new logo look familiar?…

999-browser-trends

It’s a sensible choice. Existing IE users who don’t know or care about Edge won’t notice any difference — they’ll still click that blue ‘e’ icon.

The name and logo are a little underwhelming. Perhaps Microsoft could have been more radical? That said, users rarely like major changes (Windows 8 anyone?) Here’s a look at a recent build of the browser to whet your appetite.

Worldwide Mobile Browser Statistics, March to April 2015

Mobile usage grew marginally to reach 33.47% of all web activity.

The top mobile browsing applications:

The mobile market remains lively and most users stick with the default browser on the device. For iPhone users, that’s Safari — Apple don’t permit other rendering engines. It dropped below 20% for the first time since December 2013. However, the iPhone remains exceptionally popular so it’s unlikely to be a long-term trend.

At the lower end of the chart, IEMobile has overtaken the ancient Nokia browser to become the sixth most-popular application. But 2.2% of the market is barely cause for a celebration. Perhaps Microsoft Edge will fare better?
Continue reading this article on SitePoint

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I didn’t like it at first, but did get used to it and now am sad to see it go! I can’t imaging liking “Edge”. Hopefully it won’t keep us all on edge like IE did.

I knew IE wouldn’t die that easily. Its ghost will haunt us for ever. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m surprised they used the name of the engine as the name of the browser. I was hoping Edge would remain the engine, and that the browser would be… I don’t know… Let’s say “Engine”.

(“Microsoft Engine” being the name of the latest - i.e. edge - browser, who’s engine name is Edge… that would’ve been so meta…)

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i wouldn’t care if they call it Microsoft butt as long as it respects the latest web standards ,no more ie hacks pelase

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IE7 and down died a while ago.

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One thing that Microsoft needs to fix is the upgrade model. We get users stuck on 5-10 year old browsers because they don’t auto-update. With Chrome and Firefox, we would have problems if users were still on Chrome 3 and Firefox 2, however this doesn’t happen for a simple reason: They auto-update. As such, they seem like better browsers. If everyone on IE was on IE11, we wouldn’t have nearly as many of the problems that we associate with IE in general.

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I think they are addressing that now with their new business model for Windows 10 and assossiated tech.

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To be fair, IE does upgrade … but it’s not had one for a while and you’ll be stuck on older versions if you use Vista or below.

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