2005 Browser Stats Show a Slow Gain by Firefox and Safari, Slow Decrease in IE Usage

 
Jan 06, 2006

by Judith Dinowitz

NetApplications, which provides Web-based applications that measure, monitor and market Web sites for Small to Medium Enterprises (SME), announced its monthly Web site browser stats for December 2005. They reported some interesting trends for the year 2005, based on stats culled from use of their flagship product, Hitslink, which is installed on almost 50,000 medium- and small-business websites.

According to their stats, Microsoft Internet Explorer ended 2004 with 90.31% browser usage market share, and steadily lost ground, ending 2005 with 85.05% market share. Microsoft promises IE's first major upgrade in years in 2006, but has also announced that it is abandoning the Mac version of IE.

Mozilla Firefox championed the open source browser concept and is the primary challenger to IE's dominance. Firefox ended 2004 with 4.64% market share and although it started 2005 on fire, it cooled off during the summer months. Toward the end of the year, after releasing Firefox 1.5, it regained its momentum and closed the year at an impressive 9.57%.

Apple's Safari browser enjoyed a highly successful 2005 as the only browser to gain market share each and every month of the year. Safari ended 2004 in fourth place with 1.56% market share. Safari gained steadily to end 2005, and leaped past Netscape to grab the third leading browser spot at 3.07% market share.

Netscape joined IE as the only browsers to lose market share in 2005. Netscape ended 2004 with 2.07% of browser usage market share, and was the third leading browser at the time. After an admitted error in reporting itself as either Firefox or IE was discovered and fixed, and an announced deal with HP to include Netscape browsers with new computers, Netscape enjoyed a brief surge in September to 2.16%. However, Netscape ended 2005 in 4th place with 1.24% browser usage market share.

Opera browser from Opera Software ended 2005 with 0.55% browser usage market share, which is exactly where ended in 2004. Opera held steady while it completely changed its business model, going from a choice of a free browser with banner ads or a paid browser without the banners to a free browser without ads model. Opera browser maintains a strong presence on handhelds, and as those devices start to become more prominent, Opera is well-placed to take advantage of it.

"The close of 2005 marks the end of the calendar year, but also sets the stage for a very interesting 2006," observed Vince Vizzaccaro, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Relationships at NetApplications. "While any company would be thrilled to hold Microsoft's 85% market share, IE can not rest lightly. Netscape also once owned a huge percentage prior to IE's debut."

Vizzaccaro continued, "FireFox is very close to hitting a critical mass of 10%, which could mean a more rapid adoption rate. However, IE won't go away quietly as major, and long overdue upgrades are expected to be released in 2006. With Microsoft abandoning the Mac, combined with Apple's continuing market share gains, Safari has even more room to grow. Netscape seems to have been hit hard by Firefox's success, so 2006 will test the company?s vigilance to hold on to and increase its user-base."

You can view these trends in NetApplications' quarterly reports on the browser market share for 2005 (Data provided by NetApplications via Hitslink.com):

Browser Market Share for Calendar Q1, 2005

Browser Market Share for Calendar Q2, 2005

Browser Market Share for Calendar Q3, 2005

Browser Market Share for Calendar Q4, 2005

Top Browser Version Trends in Year 2005

The Source of the Statisics

Where does NetApplications get these statistics on browser usage, and how applicable are these trends for the rest of the Web? According to Vizzaccaro, the company collects data from the browsers of site visitors to Net Applications' exclusive, on-demand network of small to medium enterprise live stats customers. He estimates the sample size for these sites as more than 40,000 urls and growing. Some of these customers include: Alexa (a division of Amazon), AutoMart, BestBuy, CityMax, ConsumerSearch, FutureFoto, TravelYellowPages, and YellowPageCity. The makeup of the Hitslink population is as follows:

  • 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 (which includes gov, org, search engine marketers, etc.)

The information published on Hitslink.com 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.

Vizzaccaro said, "HitsLink is a full featured, yet affordable analytics tool, which is why so many people choose to use it. Because it's a live, hosted statistics product on such a large sample of websites, we are able to provide aggregate stats that represent worldwide internet usage."

Vizzacaro said that for every page view on their members' sites, NetApplications gathers the vital stats of the visitor and tracks their behavior through the site. The data is collected live, as the visit happens. "We don't share individual customer data, but our customers and their site visitors are from all over the world. Traffic from customer to customer varies greatly, but the average traffic for a HitsLink customer is just over 1000 page views per day."

In addition, the company classifies 300+ 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 the NetApplications population represent dozens of countries in regions including North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia / Pacific Rim and Parts of Asia. Viziccaro noted that no double byte search engines are included in the search engine referral population.

HitsLink is available in a free 30-day trial, and starts at only $9.95 a month. For more information on the product, and on their Browser Share statistics, see their website, http://www.netapplications.com.

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