IMPORTANT NOTICE:

April market share data for browsers and operating systems significantly adjusted.  Click here for details

May, 2008

Apple's Gamble: Push Safari to Windows Users via Software Updates. Did it Work? - On March 18th, Apple released the Safari 3.1 web browser for Windows and the Mac.  With the release, Apple also included Safari 3.1 with Apple's Software Update service on Windows.  It was labeled as an update with the option to install pre-selected.  The update has been pushed to millions of Windows users of Apple's other software products, like iTunes.  Normally, Apple's Software Update service is not used for delivery of new products.  Clearly, this is a calculated risk by Apple that has annoyed and/or alienated some users.

However, the question is, did it work?  Did Apple gain browser market share on Windows based on this move?  The answer is yes.

Safari 3.0 on Windows never gained much market share, peaking at .07%.  However, Safari 3.1 on Windows is rapidly gaining market share, already tripling Safari 3.0's peak.

Note: As of April 18th, Apple's update now lists Safari as 'new' software if not already installed.

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About Our Market Share Statistics

This data provides valuable insight into significant trends for internet usage.  These statistics include monthly information on key statistics such as browser trends (e.g. Internet Explorer vs. Firefox market share), search engine referral data (e.g. Yahoo vs. MSN vs. Google traffic market share) and operating system share (Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux market share or even the iPhone market share vs. Windows Mobile).

We use a unique methodology for collecting this data.  We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers.  The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month.  The information published is an aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics.  The site unique visitor and referral information is summarized on a monthly basis.

In addition, we classify 430+ referral sources identified as search engines.  Aggregate traffic referrals from these engines are summarized and reported monthly.  The statistics for search engines include both organic and sponsored referrals.  The websites in our population represent dozens of countries in regions including North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia / Pacific Rim and Parts of Asia.

The data is made available free of charge on a monthly basis that includes monthly browser market share trends, top search engine referrals, screen resolutions, top ISPs and operating systems trends.  An upgraded version is available that provides reports by geolocation, preview weekly data and other features.

Additional estimates about the website population:

76% participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites.

43% are commerce sites

18% are corporate sites

10% are content sites

29% classify themselves as other (includes gov, org, search engine marketers etc..)

Recent Changes to Site

We have recently upgraded our method of presenting the data.  We now group search engines and operating systems in reports in addition to displaying the market share of the versions.  For example, Google has many international versions of its search engine.  In the past, we displayed data for Google's main site and all the international versions (like www.google.co.uk for the United Kingdom version), but not a summary report of all the versions combined.  This is now displayed in our summary report as "Google - Global".

We have applied filtering technology to eliminate sites and visitors that would skew the data with automated or unrepresentative traffic generation.  We have removed the skewing data from the historical reports.

We have added tracking for one hundred and thirty more international search engines.  This has the effect of reducing the share of the main search engine site by the amount of the new versions.  The summary reports are unaffected.  For example, in the Search Engine Versions report, Google Argentina used to be grouped into the generic 'Google' line item, but is now broken out into its own line item.

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