The results – as tabulated by StatCounter Global Stats – are in. What browsers are site visitors in the UK really using to view the sites you create?
Internet Explorer still reigns supreme with a 45.99% share. Firefox follows with 21.72% and Chrome weighs in with a nearly identical 21.44%. Safari takes 8.72%. For the vast category of “other”, Opera leads the tally with 0.95%, followed by – believe it or not – Sony PS3 at 0.44%.
As for the numbers you really want – browser versions – here they are.
These figures are interesting enough to warrant a further breakout:
| IE 8.0 | 29.1 |
| Firefox 3.6 | 10.17 |
| IE 9.0 | 8.55 |
| IE 7.0 | 6.72 |
| Safari 5.0 | 4.79 |
| Chrome 12.0 | 3.3 |
| Firefox 4.0 | 3.09 |
| Chrome 15.0 | 2.94 |
| Chrome 10.0 | 2.81 |
| Chrome 13.0 | 2.77 |
| Chrome 14.0 | 2.65 |
| Chrome 11.0 | 2.29 |
| Firefox 5.0 | 2.21 |
| Chrome 8.0 | 1.84 |
| Firefox 6.0 | 1.81 |
| Chrome 9.0 | 1.78 |
| IE 6.0 | 1.62 |
| Firefox 7.0 | 1.61 |
| Safari 5.1 | 1.56 |
| Firefox 8.0 | 1.53 |
| Safari iPad | 1.45 |
Are we going Responsive? Have the headaches of IE6 been replaced by all new headaches? 2012 will tell an interesting story!
You can get a full tally and generate your own stats at StatCounter Global Stats.
It’s painful that IE still reigns suppreme, but what can we do? It is still the most important browser to optimise to, and figures like this only reinforce the need to consider it fully when developing sites.
It’s interesting that Safari still has such a low degree of penetration though. Does this cover mobile browsers? If so then it adds weight those arguing against iPhone specific apps due to the low user base.