Just a quick note. I think that Apple was very clever to launch Safari on Windows. Although I do not expect to see people moving to a new browser in droves, I can see millions of Apple users who have to deal with Windows at work or at school switch to their favorite browser. This will immediately translate in a couple of percentage points in market share. If you add the iPhone, which will access traditional web sites using Safari, it is clear that in the next few months we will see impressive market share gains for Apple’s browser. Personally, I am betting that Safari will hit a 10% market share in December.
Although Apple makes no financial gains from Safari, the browser is a piece of software of strategic importance if they want to make sure that the Internet remains standards based. Microsoft and Adobe have recently announced strategies to develop proprietary technologies to improve user experience with web based applications. However, these technologies are a real competitive threat to other players. It is clear that Apple understands this perfectly. That is why they are attacking Microsoft on their own turf and at the same time fighting Adobe by making Flash less relevant (not supporting it on the iPhone and working with Google to switch youTube content to H.264).
June 12th, 2007 at 11:18 am
10% is really unlikely considering the final version isn’t due until October anyway. Even if every Mac user switched to Safari on Windows at work/school, then it’d still account for less than 5%.
Realistically, Safari could only reach those levels if Firefox and IE users switch. I can’t see many doing that.
The best thing about Safari is that it creates more competition in the browser arena, which is great. It also allows more web developers to test and support Safari which, unless you had a Mac, wasn’t easy before.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Actually Safari’s current market share is already at 5% according to Apple and some independent studies place it as high as 6.41% (according to Net Applications). So, a 10% goal is not unrealistic.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Usage share of Safari:
– Net Applications, Q2 2007: 4.70%
– TheCounter.com, April 2007: 2.94%
– W3 Counter, June 2007: 1.86%
– OneStat.com, January 2007: 1.64%
– ADTECH, February 2007: 1.63%
Net Applications’ figures are the most optimistic, and by a wide margin, why should we assume that they are the most accurate figures? NA’s sample may be skewed in favor of the U.S. where the Mac market share is higher and increasing faster. Anyway, I could see the number of Safari users double from June 2007 to June 2008. And Safari could reach a 8-10 percent share as measured by Net Applications. It has 18.6 million users at the moment according to Steve Jobs, attracting approximately 15-20 million Windows users doesn’t seem too unrealistic to me, this is only a tiny fraction of the Windows user base (and Firefox would still be ahead by the way). Millions of Macs will be sold in the next 12 months and the number of Safari/Mac users will increase, and by June 2008 Apple will have sold several million iPhones as well. We’ll know next year at the WWDC, I expect to see more pie charts. 😀