CF Labs

Over the past few months there has been an increased fight for market share amongst the top browsers. As well as the traditional rivalry between Internet Explorer and Firefox, we’ve seen a new entrant to the market over the last year – Google Chrome. Microsoft has this week started offering a choice to European users of its operating systems to pick which browser they want to use. Google is to start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across its portfolio of websites following the discovery of new security flaws.

So where does the market currently stand? Over the past few months I’ve been looking at the statistics for the Consumer Focus & Consumer Focus Labs websites and thought I’d share some of the results.

Browser Share Headlines

• Internet Explorer has lost about 9% of its share since January 2009, but still holds onto 70.56% total
• Firefox has gained 3.7% since January 2009, now holding 18.96%
• Chrome has jumped from less than 1% to 4.7% overtaking both Opera and Safari
• Safari has steadily risen from around 3% to 4.3%
• Opera has dropped from around 1% to 0.7%

Top Browsers

• January 2009: IE7 (51.48%), IE6 (27.68%), Firefox 3 (12.96%)
• February 2009: IE7 (51.99%), IE6 (27.98%), Firefox 3 (12.54%)
• January 2010: IE7 (28.40%), IE8 (28.00%), IE6 (16.75%), Firefox 3.5 (12.13%)
• February 2010: IE8 (28.80%), IE7 (26.50%), IE6 (15.24%), Firefox 3.5 (12.45%)

Full Details

Below I’ve published a Google Spreadsheet showing the percentages for each browser. We’re releasing this data under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. I’ll try and update it on a monthly basis.

Google Spreadsheet: Browser Stats

Sites Monitored

The sites monitored change month by month as new sites are launched and old ones closed down. The sites used in this period are as follows:
January / February 2009

• Consumer Focus (www.consumerfocus.org.uk)

January / February 2010

• Consumer Focus (www.consumerfocus.org.uk)
• Consumer Focus Labs (www.consumerfocuslabs.org.uk)
• Recalled Products (www.recalledproducts.org)
• Digital Switchover Wales Survey Results (dso-wales.consumerfocuslabs.org)
• “Does Directgov Deliver?” Report (directgov.consumerfocuslabs.org)
• Fuel Poverty Charter Wales (www.fuelpovertycharterwales.org.uk)