The problems involved in measurement are discussed in this Wikipedia article. The figures given by this site are for desktops only this year so far: Chrome, 58.91 percent; Internet Explorer, 18.19 percent; Firefox, 11.91 percent; Microsoft’s new Edge, 5.6 percent; Apple’s Safari, 3.52 percent; Opera 1.22 percent. There are a few others under one percent. Microsoft is having trouble pushing its new browser Edge as many users prefer to stay with the older Internet Explorer even though its usage is going down over time. Edge can be used only on Windows whereas other browsers such as Chrome, Opera, and Firefox can be used on other operating systems.
Statcounter share figures for July this year for browsers in all devices shows: Chrome, 54.3 percent; Safari, 14.15 percent; UC browser, 8.57 percent; Firefox, 5.73 percent; Opera 3.98 percent; Internet Explorer, 3.74 percent; Samsung Internet, 3.53 percent; Android, 2.47 percent; Edge 1.74 percent and others 1.7 percent. The UC browser has many users in Asia and Africa. It has had problems with security but apparently many have been solved. It will work with Windows but is more often on mobile devices.
The usage for desktop browsers of July of this year for three different measuring sources are as follows. NetMarketShare gives Chrome, 59.57 percent of the market far ahead of anyone else. Next is Microsoft’s venerable Internet Explorer(IE) still at 16.5 percent. Firefox had 12.32 percent. Apple’s Safari had 3.66 percent while the new Microsoft Edge had 5.65 percent far behind IE. Many businesses are staying with IE and Microsoft is still providing updates etc.
StatCounter has rather different results for July this year. Chrome is still in first place with 63.48 percent of the market above that claimed by NetMarketShare. Internet Explorer is far lower at just 9.03 percent. Firefox is rated at 13.82 percent well above IE. Apple’s Safari has 5.04 percent more than Microsoft’s new Edge at only 3.95 percent. Others is fairly substantial at 4.68 percent and would include Opera.
W3Counter also has somewhat different figures. It gives Chrome the highest rating of all at 64 percent. IE receives its lowest rating at just 5.4 percent. Firefox too receives its lowest rating at a mere 6.9 percent of the market. Safari gets its highest rating of 13.6 percent while the new Edge also fares its worst at just 2.6 percent. Others were 3.2 percent. In spite of the differences between the 3 raters, all agree that Chrome is the undisputed leader.
When it comes to operating system use globally by desktops, Windows continues to dominate with 84.48 percent of the market in July of 2017. Apple’s OS X comes next with 11.3 percent, Linux had 1.79 percent, Chrome OS just 0.46 percent and 1.97 percent were unknown. In spite of the dominance of Windows operating systems, many users prefer other browsers than IE and Edge that come with Windows systems. As the appended video shows there are at least half a dozen different browsers worth considering with several of them not even registering on the statistics for browser use. They are all free so it is worth trying them out to see if they meet your needs.
