While people love to crack jokes about Internet Explorer and it’s multiple problems, it still is the world’s most popular Web browser. While it may have taken a hit in market share for a few months, it’s on the rise again according to the newest research.
Net Applications released the desktop browser share information for April today that shows Internet Explorer’s use climbing again up to 54.09 percent of the browser market. Firefox and Chrome are still battling it out for second place with Firefox taking second place, but only by a small margin with 20.20 percent of market share compared to Chrome’s 18.85 percent. Safari and Opera are still at the bottom of the barrel with 4.81 and 1.63 percent respectively.
Looking at the numbers, you can see a general increase in market share from Internet Explorer after a drop in November of last year. Firefox has been on a continual decline since June of 2011 with Chrome slowly rising, although it has been decreasing for the last few months. It will be interesting to see how the two do with Firefox 13 about to launch with multiple improvements that may bring users back to Mozilla’s browser.
It’s a much different picture when you look at the browser market for mobile. Safari owns the mobile market with a whopping 64 percent although that’s due to the massive proliferation of the iPhone. The Android browser is in a respectable second place at 18.87 percent with Opera Mini taking third place at 12.05 percent. My mobile browser of choice, Firefox Mobile, is near last place with only 0.02 percent. I guess that’s what you get when you stick exclusively to one platform.
Speaking of mobile, the iPad now exceeds the iPhone in terms of Web browsing. The iPhone started to lose its dominance starting in February but April is when the iPad really took off. The latest numbers show that the iPad takes up 33.74 percent of iOS mobile browsing while the iPhone is at 27.36 percent.
All of this is telling of the disconnect between the desktop and mobile markets. Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the desktop market, while they almost have nothing when it comes to mobile. Maybe it’s better off that way though. I dare not think of a world where desktop and mobile browsing are ruled by a single platform.
[h/t: CNET]