01 March 2012

The browser wars

It's quite a while since I posted anything on the browsers used to access Information Research, but my attention was drawn to this by one of counter services I use.  Way back, Internet Explorer had the lion's share, with, if I recall aright, more than 80% of the hits.  Things have changed:

IE - all versions - 39.2%
Firefox - all - 26.2%
Chrome - all - 13.2%
Opera - all - 1.2%

Phone browsers - all - 1.2% (Nokia contributes 0.8%)
Miscellaneous browsers and bots - 16.4%

That leaves 2.6% missing - lost in cyberspace.

If Msoft is no longer quite so dominant in the browser business - a fact largely due at this point to the success of Firefox (although Chrome is beginning to bite), in the operating system world it is a different picture.
Windows (all versions) - 75%
Unknown  -  16%
Mac OSX  -  4.0%
Linux  -  3.4%
Phone OS  -  1.6% (led by Sybian - Nokia - with 0.8%)

There are a couple of interesting things to note here:  Linux is almost as popular as OSX - possibly having to do with the computer-oriented part of the readership of the journal; and the fact that the mobile OS do not figure very largely. Presumably Windows will get a further boost, given the new connection between Nokia and Microsoft, but the iPhone and the iPad appear to be very little used by readers of the readership.  My guess is that the use of IOS - Apple's mobile OS - will grow, given the sales success of various versions of the iPhone and the iPad - but they have a long way to go, even to reach the 3.4% 'market share' of Linux.

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