Apple's Safari push to Windows proves a success

By Stephen Withers
Friday, 02 May 2008 12:26

Opinion and Analysis

Apple copped some flack from some quarters by offering its Safari web browser to Windows users along with updates for iTunes and QuickTime, but the strategy seems to have paid off.

Net Applications Market Share report shows a significant improvement in Safari for Windows' "market share."

Whereas Safari 3.0 for Windows never achieved more than 0.07 percent, in April 2008 version 3.1 picked up 0.21 percent. Version 3.0 dropped back to 0.02 percent.

OK, that's still a drop in the bucket when you consider that Internet Explorer still accounts for over 75 percent, with Firefox on 17 percent. Safari's overall share is a whisker over five and a half percent.

But what about this: it's been widely reported that iPhone owners account for a disproportionate proportion of mobile web use, and in Net Applications' latest figures, the iPhone and iPod touch account for 0.17 percent, compared with 0.06 percent for Windows CE. The latter figure either includes all related OSes such as Windows Mobile or they have a vanishingly small use.

So to put it in context, there were more site visits from users on Safari for Windows than there were from people using Windows devices.

What we'll have to wait and see is whether this spike in Safari for Windows use is simply the result of people discovering it was installed on their systems without them realising and then firing it up to see what it can do, or if a proportion of them actually liked what they saw and are using it regularly if not exclusively.

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