December, 2011: Google Chrome, Opera, Safari Share Up; Internet Explorer, Firefox – Down

By | January 3, 2012 | 17 Comments


Happy New Year!

It’s that time of the month again when we look at the market share results for the last month. How your favorite browser did finish the 2011 race? Let’s find out.

Already broken through the 50% barrier, Internet Explorer share continues the downtrend, this time it has decreased by 1.19 point, from 48.95% to 47.76%.

It looks like more releases did not really help Mozilla as Firefox is going in the same direction as IE, down from 20.58% to 20.09% (0.49 point decrease).

With every month passing by, Google Chrome is gearing towards the #2 spot in the market and has now increased its share by 0.68 point, up from 16.90% to 17.58%.

Thanks to Apple device sales, the happy days continue for the Safari web browser as its share has grown from 8.35% to 8.67% (0.32 point increase).

Despite overall downtrend, Opera has managed to rebound some of its losses and is now up by 0.11 point, all the way from 1.55% to 1.66%.

Opera Mini on the other hand has been doing well for quite some time and saw a generous 0.36 point increase, up from 1.53% to 1.89%.

That’s all for now, folks. What are your predictions for 2012?


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Anonymous

    Opera fell off the chart? It is good to hear it regained its loss, though. 

    I didn’t realize how much Safari has gained over this past year. Does this include Safari mobile?

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

      Yes this does include Safari mobile.

    • Anonymous

      Opera didn’t fall off the chart. Looks like the chart was custom edited to exclude Opera.

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      There was no loss, the number of users is aways increasing as the official reports show, the stats are flawed because the research sample increases (new Internet users). Most of these new users (pre-installed IE & Safari in top OSs) are adding into the numbers of these and other browsers (Chrome) more than being/adding new Opera users (for obvious reasons [but I'll write: marketing]).

      Yes, this have to be explained by me every time.

      cc/@1b8f1f35d6966d16cbea29249807fab0:disqus 

      • Anonymous

        Yes, after reading this Sitepoint article I realized many of the problems in browser statistics collection. As you pointed out, they certainly can be read wrong too. 

  • Saex Conroy

    safari isnt that cool, it uses webkit, chrome also uses webkit, if i wanna use webkit, id go with chrome

    • Przemysław Lib

       On Windows? Yes both Chrome and FF delivers more.

      But on MacOSX Safari is quite good (and apparently Apple put less resources behind Win port).

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, I agree. It scores lowest on the HTML5test except for IE9.

  • IE & Opera Fanboy

    Opera mini/mobile will also die after few years, with the raise of iOS & Android OSes the place for Opera is going less & less.
    Opera on desktop has some good innovation feature, but it misses few today’s user need.

    Hopefully, IE9+ would bring some users back. 

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      Wow what are those “today’s user needs”?? o.o

    • IOF

      Yes, Opera will die just like Firefox and Chrome died because everyone is using the default browser.

      Oh, wait…

      Also, if there’s less space for Opera how come it’s still growing on mobile?

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6D3ULFVQ5WSVG25YPOHPDQFLBE Art Mcfreeze

        No one likes their phone’s default browser. That’s why it’s still growing on mobile.

    • Mikah

      Opera Mini is growing fast because its got the killer feature Opera Turbo which saves users money & speeds up loading on slow networks.
      On the desktop Opera’s browser share is pretty flat but the important fact is the number of desktop users is still growing.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6D3ULFVQ5WSVG25YPOHPDQFLBE Art Mcfreeze

    People tend not to like the default browser on their device. Especially BlackBerry and Windows Phone users. Opera Mini, at least, will stay a common mobile browser. Opera Mobile is also likely to stay high.
    Opera Desktop will hopefully also do well, though it is unlikely. If they can do a little more advertising, they might get up perhaps a percent.
    IE will continue down for a bit, until people start switching to Windows 8 and realize the potential in IE 10. Then it will start to go back up for a bit.
    Firefox is on it’s way down, but may see some spikes among developers if they keep up the good work they are doing with their new 3D Web Inspector.
    Safari is unlikely to increase much, however Safari Mobile will see an increase with each new iPhone/iTouch release as many decide to switch from an old phone or iPod, and a decrease from the many who decide to make the switch from iOS to Android.
    Chrome will keep going up, as Google continues it’s advertising and people switch to Android. However, I feel many among at least the developers are deciding it’s not living up to it’s potential and jumping ship, either to IE9/10, or to Opera or some of the smaller browsers.

    LONG LIVE OPERA!

    • Saex Conroy

       http://comicadze.com/thumbnails/large_Caution_This_is_SPARTA_Funny_Picture_67625.jpg

    • IOF

      Opera desktop is doing well in countries like Russia and Ukraine. The number of Opera users on desktop is actually growing.

      The US is not the only relevant part of the world.

  • Asknobody

    So now when FF got money from Google, will they start psending money on FF promotion?

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