tniemi Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 Hello! For your amusement, I thought to share this with you.I took the data from:http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and made some basic analysis.The following files are attached: layoutengines.png -- Chart showing the popularity of layout engines. browsers.png -- Chart showing the popularity of Internet browsers. browserstats.zip -- Zip package that contains: browserstats.pl -- Perl script used for data processing. browserstats.csv -- Processed data in CSV format. browserstats.xls -- Excel sheet used for plotting and analysis. browserstats.pdf -- Finished charts in PDF format. Results are: Microsoft Internet Explorers (browsers using Trident layout engine) dominates now only 50% of the browser market. The share of Internet Explorers is dropping quite steadily by 0.6%/month. That means 7.2%/year. If this trend continues, the market share of Internet Explorer reaches zero by the year 2015. I hope I live that long. browserstats.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boen_robot Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 That would be IE6 I think, not IE as a whole.If you look carefully, IE7 is growing, and when IE8 hits us, it will decline in favor of IE8. So it's hard to say that IE as a whole will be gone in 2015. Besides, some users, when seeing IE8 and/or future versions might revert back to it.BTW, you're not the first to have noticed this. I've seen similar predictions on sitepoint.com as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspnetguy Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 According to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2 IE6 has less than 25% of the market and IE7 has around 46% IE still commands 71% of the browser market. It seems to be declining at about 0.5-1% per month.Interestingly Chrome has surpassed Opera after only one month in beta. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tniemi Posted October 2, 2008 Author Share Posted October 2, 2008 Well, this was for fun and giggles. That would be IE6 I think, not IE as a whole.Nope, it's IE as a whole. Look at http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp for the latest info: IE7 26.3%, IE6 22.3%. The older versions are somewhere around 0.1% or lower. That's the statistics I plotted.What is interesting is how small dent IE7 managed to made to the whole browser market. IE8 has to be some really excellent and super browser if Microsoft wants to catch up. Competition is now extremely hard!But as said many times over. Statistic are statistics, and general statistics are even worse. You have to know your own surfers. In Finland Firefox has a share of 51.8%, Internet Explorere 40.5% and falling rapidly...Chrome is interesting. Let's see what happens... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synook Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 IE will never be extinct. Not when it is still bundled with Windows... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skemcin Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 Any analysis from just one web site is really pointless. I can appreciate the effort put into creating this analysis, but until it covers a wider audience of sites, it really says nothing. I suspect most people who visit this site are a little more technical savvy and therefore would likely use a browser that is as close to standard compliant as possible. Nice work, but not much water under the bridge. IE is a mess. There are so many subtle (and not so subtle) differences in how it renders pages from IE7, to IE8 beta, to Windows XP, to Windows Vista, and even differences when you move to a 64 bit platform. As long as it is still built into the OS (as already stated), its never going to go away and neither will the pain it brings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspnetguy Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 even using the IE7 compatibility mode in IE8 doesn't render exactly the same as IE7. MS needs a plan to start eliminating older versions like IE6...unfortunately probably 95% of existing enterprise Intranet applications were build to work on IE6 so that won't be happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 If this trend continues, the market share of Internet Explorer reaches zero by the year 2015.I hope I live that long. That's just it, isn't it? Statistics change, they don't necessarily predict future, just reflect trends and contemporary stats.A history professor of mine used a different example/anecdote:A historian/statistician/anthropologist was looking to find out the average height of people around 1000AD, using statistics from the height of conscripts and professional military from different past wars, and general statistics from military records in different historical periods. The theory was that the requirements of height for military was usually so-and-so over the average height, selecting a certain group from the top percentage of people height-wise. Using this data to find a pattern with past 1700-1800-1900 records, he was able to make a backwards calculation graph like the one you have made, based on tendencies, and he calculated the average height of people around 1000 AD. You know what he found was the average height of a person at that time? About 30 cm (a foot). :)Of course, the fault was that his analysis was based on a progressive development of general increase in height from 1000AD to 1950AD-> being correct. :)No idea how general increase in height has happened, but maybe it can be shown more like this:1000AD ______________/ 1950AD________timeline -->___________ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skemcin Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 How do you know when a statistician is lying?...............He shows you a graph. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics"“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please: facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable” - Mark Twain“Men willingly believe what they wish” — Julius Caesar“I can prove anything by statistics except the truth” — George CanningYou can apply the same type of logic you used to predict that Safari is going to gain 100% market share. After all, it's share is rising, isn't it? So wouldn't it inevitably hit 100% at some point? Firefox is rising too, so is Chrome. So according to your logic that means that at some point Safari, Firefox, and Chrome are going to reach 100%.The only way IE would drop to 0 is if Microsoft went out of business. That's literally the only possible scenario in which usage of Internet Explorer drops to 0. The numbers are going to level out at some point. What you're seeing in the graphs is essentially the browser market correcting itself. IE had artificially high usage numbers for a while because it was really the only choice for a lot of people. Now that more people realize they have a choice the market is adjusting itself to account for the other browsers, mostly Firefox. The trends aren't going to stay where they are though, if you look over a long enough period of time you can use the numbers to predict anything you want. You can distort the numbers to prove whatever point you're trying to prove. The fact is that usage between browsers is going to stabilize at some point and no major browser is going to drop to 0. Look at the browsers that have essentially dropped to 0. AOL and Netscape have dropped to 0 because they no longer have browser products that can compete with anything else. As long as IE is remaining competitive (and IE8 is a very competitive product), you're never going to see IE completely leave the browser scene. To predict otherwise is just stupid.And as Skemcin pointed out, trying to apply the numbers for w3schools to the entire internet is just as pointless. The stats here show Firefox usage at over 40%, when in reality across the entire internet it's much closer to 18%. The majority of people visiting this site are web developers, so it shouldn't come as a shock to anybody that web developers prefer Firefox. The numbers for Opera on this site are also anomolously high. The only thing you can say about the numbers on this site is that this is the browser usage among people who visit w3schools.com. Look at the numbers for Chrome at w3schools, Chrome has over 3% already. You really think that's indicative of the general population, you think 3% of the general population is using Chrome? According to this page, there are 1.4 billion internet users worldwide. If 3% of them used Chrome that would mean that there are 42 million users of Chrome. There's no possible way that could be true. It would also mean that there are over 600 million people using Firefox. Go look at the download numbers for Firefox and tell me if you think there are 600 million people using it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aszxcv Posted October 2, 2008 Share Posted October 2, 2008 IE will never be extinct. Not when it is still bundled with Windows...i agree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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