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20 -May -2012 - 23:10
Saturday, 02 July 2011 08:12

Chrome At 20% Share, Could Intercept Firefox By October.

By Daniel Bailey

The June browser market share numbers are out. They are close to our previous predictions and show accelerating growth for Chrome, a slow decline for IE and a sharp drop for Firefox, which is under increasing pressure to reinvent itself.

(All data based on StatCounter’s analysis, if not mentioned otherwise.) The current browser battle continued in June with a traditionally weak performance for Firefox, a slowing decline of Microsoft’s IE, as well as Chrome, which is gaining market share at record pace. IE lost .29 points and is down to 43.58%, Firefox dropped by .95 points to 28.34% and Chrome gobbled up more than the combined loss of the two browsers to jump by 1.29 points to 20.65%, which is in line with our predictions. Safari and Opera remained almost flat at 5.07% (+ .06 points) and 1.74% (- .1 points).

Net Applications data vary from StatCounter’s numbers, but show the same trend. IE is down to 53.68%, Mozilla down to 21.67% and Chrome is up to 13.11%. Safari was slightly up to 7.48%, while Opera lost almost 1/8 of its market share and is now down to 1.73%.

Implications and Forecast

There is apparently nothing that Google can do wrong at this time. Chrome is winning market share despite a virtually non-existent and sporadic marketing campaigns. Firefox still splits the market share battle between IE and Chrome, but there is reason to believe that Chrome will be able to surpass Firefox later this year and turn the browser battle into a two horse race.

With Firefox 5 out of the gate and a somewhat successful launch, if we forget the enterprise hiccup for a moment, it will now be critical for Mozilla to release compelling versions of Firefox 6 and 7. The company will need flawless execution and stunning browsers to get Internet users to stay away from Chrome. Firefox 5 showed first signs that Mozilla can transition its users to a new browser version much faster and potentially cater to a loyal user base, but its weakness is the case that it makes to fence sitters, which apparently are dropping from its user base quickly.

Mozilla recently stepped up its community effort – which it has neglected for years – again, which should help the company to hold on to some users it otherwise may lose. There is also a new innovation initiative to bring back a perception of a browser that not only copies features Chrome is pioneering, but lives a culture that delivers unique new features.

Microsoft’s problem is mainly the fact that it has an old browser (IE8) for an old operating system (Win XP). Both still hold the lion’s share in their respective market. IE9 addresses only Windows 7 (which has about a third of the OS market now) and a portion of Windows Vista users, and only captures a share among those OS users. IE9 is already a done deal for Microsoft as it now focuses on IE10, which should have a much better value as it is tied to Windows 8 and will offer unique value on that platform.

Google has arguably the best cards to play right now. Chrome owns the mind share and is perceived as the best current browser, despite the fact that Firefox 5 is actually the best HTML5 browser you can use right now. Google has Chrome OS and plenty of Chrome OS hardware that it gets out in the market – and every Chrome OS user is automatically a Chrome user. On a deeper level, the market share gains of Chrome carry importance for Google’s search engine and advertising. Most Chrome users will stick with Google search and are Adsense viewers.

(StatCounter data with trend line added by ConceivablyTech)

Our forecasts so far have been within the range of a reasonable margin of error, so we will continue this tradition this month as well. If the current trend holds up, and there is no reason to believe that a dramatic turn of events will take place anytime soon, we predict that the browser race will enter a new phase in October of this year. IE will drop below 40% market share for the first time in 15 years and Chrome will match or surpass Firefox in market share at about 26%. Losses at Mozilla appear to be accelerating: We believe that Firefox could lose as much market share in the 4 months ahead as it did over the past 6 months. Chrome will mirror this direction, which puts both browsers in the 26% neighborhood by October.

Firefox Options

A strong Firefox is good for the entire browser industry and the current market share free fall does not help anyone but Google at this point. Google is clearly rewarded for its bold browser play and the huge effort it puts into developing a modern browser as well as a platform that is in perfect sync with its browser.

Mozilla’s product strategy isn’t working and it is running out of time. Promoting innovation and engaging its community are the right steps, but they may be too late. Mozilla will have to fight against two superior browsers in the future.

The company’s biggest problem is the lack of a powerful platform, which is surprising as the company has all the tools it needs to construct it. One way was its own range of mobile devices, which could have worked extremely well given the recognition of its brand, a fantastic prototype design, as well as a vast community of add-on developers that could have translated in the opportunity of powerful app platform.

We believe that Mozilla will regret that it has not taken this step. A desktop and mobile browser will not be enough to defend Mozilla against Google and Microsoft.

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