These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?
In some ways 'what browser do people use' is a bit like 'what language do people speak', except it should be easier to measure the statistics. Yet, unlike the situation with languages, we have a really hazy idea of what browsers are used. As a developer it is easy to get things working in developer preferred browsers to then be clueless about what percentage of your audience use IE and what versions. Does IE7 matter any more, or IE9? Do people with those browsers almost expect sites to look wrong?
Yet, unlike the situation with languages, we have a really hazy idea of what browsers are used. //
I use FF27 on Ubuntu, no wait I use FF28 on XP, no IE9 on Win7, no it's Safari, no Opera on Wii, no Opera Mobile, no ... it's all of them. But then I'm a special case, however I imagine that a lot of people use various browsers - home, work, mobile, etc..
As with language just having general stats is no use - what's it matter that Chinese is so popular across the world if I'm selling canoes to Amazonians?
IE7 matters if your users use it and you want to make sure they have a good experience. It's not so relevant that most sites don't have high IE7 numbers, what does your site have; what will that support costs, what revenue will that support gain.
These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?
It is hard to get a random sample of internet usage. There is just no easy way - how do you do it?
In theory you would pick a random router around the world, and pick a packet going through it, and if it comes from a web browser, count that. Then normalize by traffic amount in that router. That would, in theory, give the right result with a large enough sample size. But no one (except perhaps the NSA) can do it.
On the other hand, there are at least two companies that pretty much know the truth - Google and Facebook. A huge percent of people visit those sites daily, so much that they don't need to randomly sample, worry about bias factors, etc. - they can just look at the data they have. So internally, they have the numbers. But apparently they consider that information valuable, and do not share it.
Google is much better positioned than Facebook for one reason: Google Analytics. Many sites, even those which aren't otherwise using Google services, embed it and there's really nothing like its reach because all of the competing services cost money.
Google and Facebook only have good data for the countries in which they have significant marketshare (think Russia, China… neither of which are small countries). I'll also posit that Facebook is significantly bias towards younger users.
The problem is that not all sites see the same kind of traffic. These figures are from NetMarketshare which gets most of their data from a modest number of large corporate sites[1] and uses their estimates to adjust traffic country by country. Their numbers skew heavily towards IE, so I'm assuming that their sites must see a lot of business users. If you run a site which was aimed at home users you'd see a much great representation for WebKit and I'm sure sites like HN, ArsTechnica, etc. have a higher percentage of the latest browsers.
I have never worked on a site where the breakdown is close to NetMarketshare's figures. The ones from Akamai have been much closer, particularly internationally:
Does IE7 matter any more, or IE9? Do people with those browsers almost expect sites to look wrong?
It depends what sort of sites they use the most, and just the sheer number of sites on the Internet, most of which have been around for a long time, means that only the newest ones tend to be incompatible (and as a data point, HN is usable with IE6.)
Comments
These figures make no sense to me. The fact that we do not have meaningful browser statistics makes no sense either. Why is it so hard to get meaningful figures and why do the figures from the 'experts' vary so much?
In some ways 'what browser do people use' is a bit like 'what language do people speak', except it should be easier to measure the statistics. Yet, unlike the situation with languages, we have a really hazy idea of what browsers are used. As a developer it is easy to get things working in developer preferred browsers to then be clueless about what percentage of your audience use IE and what versions. Does IE7 matter any more, or IE9? Do people with those browsers almost expect sites to look wrong?
I use FF27 on Ubuntu, no wait I use FF28 on XP, no IE9 on Win7, no it's Safari, no Opera on Wii, no Opera Mobile, no ... it's all of them. But then I'm a special case, however I imagine that a lot of people use various browsers - home, work, mobile, etc..
As with language just having general stats is no use - what's it matter that Chinese is so popular across the world if I'm selling canoes to Amazonians?
IE7 matters if your users use it and you want to make sure they have a good experience. It's not so relevant that most sites don't have high IE7 numbers, what does your site have; what will that support costs, what revenue will that support gain.
It is hard to get a random sample of internet usage. There is just no easy way - how do you do it?
In theory you would pick a random router around the world, and pick a packet going through it, and if it comes from a web browser, count that. Then normalize by traffic amount in that router. That would, in theory, give the right result with a large enough sample size. But no one (except perhaps the NSA) can do it.
On the other hand, there are at least two companies that pretty much know the truth - Google and Facebook. A huge percent of people visit those sites daily, so much that they don't need to randomly sample, worry about bias factors, etc. - they can just look at the data they have. So internally, they have the numbers. But apparently they consider that information valuable, and do not share it.
Google is much better positioned than Facebook for one reason: Google Analytics. Many sites, even those which aren't otherwise using Google services, embed it and there's really nothing like its reach because all of the competing services cost money.
Google and Facebook only have good data for the countries in which they have significant marketshare (think Russia, China… neither of which are small countries). I'll also posit that Facebook is significantly bias towards younger users.
Google's more representative of general Internet usage. Facebook is more representative of personal, non-corporate Internet usage.
The problem is that not all sites see the same kind of traffic. These figures are from NetMarketshare which gets most of their data from a modest number of large corporate sites[1] and uses their estimates to adjust traffic country by country. Their numbers skew heavily towards IE, so I'm assuming that their sites must see a lot of business users. If you run a site which was aimed at home users you'd see a much great representation for WebKit and I'm sure sites like HN, ArsTechnica, etc. have a higher percentage of the latest browsers.
I have never worked on a site where the breakdown is close to NetMarketshare's figures. The ones from Akamai have been much closer, particularly internationally:
http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html
1. http://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology
It depends what sort of sites they use the most, and just the sheer number of sites on the Internet, most of which have been around for a long time, means that only the newest ones tend to be incompatible (and as a data point, HN is usable with IE6.)