For three years Unibia.net has been collecting web browser and operating system statistics. Today, we look back 3 years into the past at November 2007. Things have change significantly for the better in these last 3 years. Microsoft no longer dominates the web as much as it used to. Many more websites are using established web standards, and as a result, websites have changed significantly in appearance.
November 2007
We have a look back at our web statistics from the month of November 2007. Look at how Microsoft's Windows operating system dominates the market by over 90%. Linux actually has a larger market share that Apple's OS X. Very Interesting.
A closer look reveals that even after being released a year earlier, Windows XP still dominates with over 75% share over Windows Vista's dismal 7.7%. As we all know, Windows Vista was doomed from the start.
Browser wise, it's clear that Internet Explorer still dominated the Internet with over 65% of the market. While that is nowhere near the 95% plus percent it had in the early 2000's, it's still rather significant. Firefox has a strong 25% market share, while Safari has less than 1%.
A closer look as the browser versions shows that the dreaded Internet Explorer 6 still has a strong lead even though IE 7 was released several years earlier. Internet Explorer 6.0 is highly detested by web developers due to it's poor support of W3C standards. Unfortunately, IE 6.0 will remain so long as Windows XP is the dominant operating system. Something that does not appear to be changing anytime soon due to the massive failures that were Windows Vista and Vista 2.0 (aka Windows 7).
Now, we fast forward 3 years to 2010. The picture is completely different, so much progress in the right direction has been made in just 3 years.
November 2010
As it's clearly seen below, Microsoft's Windows Operating System still leads the market with over 75% share. However, that is a significant drop from 3 years earlier where Windows was at the 93% mark. Apple has really taken advantage of the Windows Vista disaster, gaining over 10% during a period of 36 months. Linux didn't do so bad either with nearly 7% gain.
A closer look reveals that Windows XP is still the dominant operating system. Windows XP is over 8 years old, yet people still prefer it over Windows Vista and Windows 7 (combined). May I remind you that Windows 7 has been out for over a year, and Windows Vista for over 4 years!
On the web browser side, things really got interesting. Microsoft Internet Explorer is no longer the market leader. It has been over taken by Mozilla Firefox with nearly 50% market share. Internet Explorer meanwhile is now less than 25%. It's a complete reversal in just 3 years, absolutely amazing. You'll also notice that Safari and new comer Chrome make up a good 20% of the market. Overall, more than 70% of the market is now dominated by standard's complaint browsers.
A more detailed analysis shows that Internet Explorer 6.0 is slowly dwindling into obscurity with just over 6%. Looks like people would rather switch to using Firefox than upgrade to the latest version of IE. Even worse (for Microsoft), most of these people remain on Windows XP.
The real winners of course are the Internet users. It took us over 3 years to get to this point, but it looks like the Internet is finally as open as it was envisioned to be. No longer is visiting a website platform dependent, most website's these days will work as intended regardless of what operating system and browsing software you use. It is indeed something to be proud of, thanks mostly to Mozilla's grass root efforts on "Taking back the Web".
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