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Microsoft Edge Overtakes Safari as World's Second Most Popular Desktop Browser
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I've been using Edge on macOS almost exclusively for 6 months, I've had no issues whatsoever. Are you on M1? Have you tried both Apple and intel chip versions?
Safari only works on Apple devices, while Edge and Chrome are made for various platforms. This explains a lot of the market share issues
Microsoft Edge has overtaken Apple's Safari to become the world's second most popular desktop browser, based on data provided by web analytics service StatCounter.
According to the data, Microsoft Edge is now used on 10.07 percent of desktop computers worldwide, 0.46 percent ahead of Safari, which stands at 9.61 percent. Google Chrome remains in first place with a dominant 66.64 percent share, and Mozilla's Firefox stands in fourth with 7.86 percent.
As the default Windows 11 browser, the popularity of Edge has crept up in recent months, with the first concrete signs that it would surpass Safari to take second place coming in February, when it was used on 9.54 percent of desktops globally. Back in January 2021, Safari held a 10.38 percent market share, indicating a gradual slippage in popularity over the last 14 months.
Meanwhile, first-placed Chrome has seen its user base increase incrementally over that time, but perhaps surprisingly, Firefox has leaked users since the beginning of the year, despite regular updates and improvements. That suggests Safari's hold on third place isn't in immediate danger, having lost only 0.23 percent share since February, but things could always change fast if Apple decides to introduce sweeping changes to the way Safari works in macOS 13 later this year.
When it comes to mobile platforms, it's a different story, reflecting Microsoft's lack of a mobile operating system since the demise of Windows Mobile. In StatCounter's analysis, Edge doesn't even make it into the top six browsers on mobile, but first-placed Chrome commands 62.87 of usage share, with Safari on iPhones and iPads taking a comfortable 25.35 percent in second place, 20.65 percent ahead of third-placed Samsung Internet, with 4.9 percent.
Looking at the overall statistics for desktop and mobile, Chrome leads with 64.36 percent, Safari lies in second with 19.13 percent, and Edge stands in third with 4.07 percent of the total market share. Trailing the top three are Firefox, Samsung Internet, and Opera with 3.41 percent, 2.84 percent, and 2.07 percent, respectively, in that order of position.
Safari for desktop has faced complaints from some users in recent years because of bugs, user experience, and website compatibility, causing Apple's Safari team to ask for feedback about how it can improve. At WWDC last year, Apple introduced a radical redesign of its browser, but the changes were met with derision, and Apple eventually rolled many of them back before releasing the final version to the public in September.
With the likes of Brave, Vivaldi, and DuckDuckGo in its rearview mirror, Apple is likely to be wary of making such substantial changes in future versions of its native browser, leading to a focus on bug fixes and performance improvements instead.
Article Link: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Safari as World's Second Most Popular Desktop Browser
If Apple were to release Safari for Windows and Linux, or GASP!, lower prices on its own products, they would be able to increase their own market share and get Safari into more hands (iDevices), onto more laps (Mac portables), and onto more desks (Mac desktops)
Given that most people use the default browser on their OS, I'd be more interested in knowing which non-default browser has the highest market share, e.g. on iOS, what's the browser share of non-Safari browsers?
Microsoft Edge has overtaken Apple's Safari to become the world's second most popular desktop browser, based on data provided by web analytics service StatCounter.
According to the data, Microsoft Edge is now used on 10.07 percent of desktop computers worldwide, 0.46 percent ahead of Safari, which stands at 9.61 percent. Google Chrome remains in first place with a dominant 66.64 percent share, and Mozilla's Firefox stands in fourth with 7.86 percent.
As the default Windows 11 browser, the popularity of Edge has crept up in recent months, with the first concrete signs that it would surpass Safari to take second place coming in February, when it was used on 9.54 percent of desktops globally. Back in January 2021, Safari held a 10.38 percent market share, indicating a gradual slippage in popularity over the last 14 months.
Meanwhile, first-placed Chrome has seen its user base increase incrementally over that time, but perhaps surprisingly, Firefox has leaked users since the beginning of the year, despite regular updates and improvements. That suggests Safari's hold on third place isn't in immediate danger, having lost only 0.23 percent share since February, but things could always change fast if Apple decides to introduce sweeping changes to the way Safari works in macOS 13 later this year.
When it comes to mobile platforms, it's a different story, reflecting Microsoft's lack of a mobile operating system since the demise of Windows Mobile. In StatCounter's analysis, Edge doesn't even make it into the top six browsers on mobile, but first-placed Chrome commands 62.87 of usage share, with Safari on iPhones and iPads taking a comfortable 25.35 percent in second place, 20.65 percent ahead of third-placed Samsung Internet, with 4.9 percent.
Looking at the overall statistics for desktop and mobile, Chrome leads with 64.36 percent, Safari lies in second with 19.13 percent, and Edge stands in third with 4.07 percent of the total market share. Trailing the top three are Firefox, Samsung Internet, and Opera with 3.41 percent, 2.84 percent, and 2.07 percent, respectively, in that order of position.
Safari for desktop has faced complaints from some users in recent years because of bugs, user experience, and website compatibility, causing Apple's Safari team to ask for feedback about how it can improve. At WWDC last year, Apple introduced a radical redesign of its browser, but the changes were met with derision, and Apple eventually rolled many of them back before releasing the final version to the public in September.
With the likes of Brave, Vivaldi, and DuckDuckGo in its rearview mirror, Apple is likely to be wary of making such substantial changes in future versions of its native browser, leading to a focus on bug fixes and performance improvements instead.
Article Link: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Safari as World's Second Most Popular Desktop Browser
Yes, but this has long been the case. Safari could certainly gain desktop/laptop share by expanding its availability outside of Apple devices but the question/debate here is why Edge has been gaining share over the past 12 months (moving it to the #2 spot) while Safari has remained relatively flat and is now #3. Chrome significantly dominates Edge and Safari anyway but short of expanding availability, is there anything Apple could or should be doing with Safari to try to increase share?
You are describing the problem of monoculture right here. Take Firefox and Safari, both browsers are starting to have issues with quite a few websites as a result of the monoculture. Mozilla is complaining about this all of the time, Google is a company pushing the use of web protocols that have yet to become a part of the official standards, thus making their sites work better on Chromium-based browsers compared to browsers like Firefox (Gecko/Quantum) and Safari (WebKit). This is not a result of Mozilla and Apple being inferior with their browsers compared to the Chromium ones, it's a result of Chromium creating a monoculture making web developers not care if websites are following the public web standards. As long as it works in Chromium they don't care if they are following the standards that the public Internet has agreed upon and flagged as ready for use.
The web is not supposed to be designed with Chromium in mind, that's the whole issue. The web is supposed to be designed according to the official HTML standards, not based on Chromium specific features that have yet to become a part of the official standard for the web.
Safari is poop though. No one would voluntarily install it on a non-Apple device. On MacOS and Windows I, like probably a lot of people, flip flop between Chrome and Edge and Firefox on Linux. On iPadOS it's permanent Safari poop since 3rd party browsers are just reskinned Apple Webkit so my iPad Pro just collects dust.
Just tried to watch a stream on Twitch.tv on my MacBook Pro 14-inch with M1 Pro and it's somehow lagging. Using Microsoft Edge on the very same MacBook Pro and no issues whatsoever. Not sure if Apple is to blame here, according to the advanced information it's the exact same HLS stream using Safari and Edge, so it seems like an Apple issue with subpar streaming performance in Safari (WebKit) and not a case of Twitch.tv simply working better using Edge/Chromium.
What Apple should do is disable and break whatever functionality in a website that’s causing those memory websites. If it goes over 90 MBs of RAM the site just implodes and web developer fixes it.
I use Firefox - and have done for many years. To begin with, on Windows, more recently on macOS.
A lot of my initial reason was hate of Internet Explorer. But, more recently, I have found it nice using the same browser whichever OS. Plus, makes it easy to send a page from one machine to another - regardless the platform.
But I have no issues using Safari and, when I want to access things that I have blocked in Firefox, I just hop across to Safari.
One good reason for that is that Chrome doesn't play well with native Windows integrations. Working in the Microsoft world with Chrome was a chore, can't even use smartcards for authentication. Group policy functions for Chrome are a joke as compared to Edge.
WebKit itself is open source because Apple made it open source.That's why I specifically referred to Desktop browsers. Also it's not "Safari" it's the WebKit engine that Google themselves used to work on and is open source. A lot more expressive than just a wrapper with the power of JavaScript injection
In what way do you consider it a mistake at all, let alone very big?
Apple could be putting more of their devices in the hands of more people. This is the profit/market share debate, and if Apple wants to increase market share, they will have to lower their prices
Doing this would increase the market share of their devices, and thus their browser: Safari
AdGuard via the App Store, not their website (paid) is the only real option and even then they admit it could be better and even have an article where they’re trying to work with Apple on it but get very little support.
I’ve been posting about this. It’s Safari, you should watch the memory go up when watching Twitch especially if you take the quality off auto and force a 1080p stream, Safari will eat up 2GBs of memory in less than 30min ha.
No, it's because Apple used KHTML to make it, which was already LGPL.
Many corporations used to standardize on EI only. As new web apps on internet or behind firewalls began many issues became abundantly clear of non compatibility.
Just in the same way exchange online has many benefits corporations adjusted. Same now goes for supporting 2 major browsers. Some based on ei code work better inn edge than in Chrome with an extension others work better or faster or more reliable in Chrome than edge.
Standardize in troubleshooting n resolutions or work arounds.
I’ve been supporting such for almost 2 decades & I can tell I you having only 2 solution is like entering a house with 1 exit is bad case in a fire.