Last month, NetMarketShare"s report indicated that the desktop market share of browsers had remained relatively unchanged. The latest statistic show a different story, once again establishing Google Chrome as one of the fastest-growing browsers, while Microsoft Edge continues to crawl forward at a snail"s pace.
According to the latest statistics shared by NetMarketShare, Google Chrome now commands 59% of the market share, a noticeable 0.36 percentage points increase compared to last month. Meanwhile, StatCounter claims that the browser holds a market share of 63.45% - which is a sizeable increase compared to the 62.81% reported by the same firm last month.
On the other hand, Edge grew to 5.62%, a meager increase of 0.01 percentage points, which is well within the margin of error. At the start of 2017, the browser held 5.48% of the market share, which just goes to show how slowly its progressing in terms of adoption. StatCounter paints a similar picture, claiming that Edge showed an insignificant increase, and commands only 3.71%.
For other browsers, NetMarketShare indicates that Internet Explorer holds a more respectable 18.40% of the market - however, this is still a decrease when compared to the statistics from last month. Firefox and Safari sit comfortably at 11.80% and 3.44% respectively. Opera and other browsers constitute 1.75% of the market.
All in all, while the situation is currently favorable for Google, it"s certainly worrying for Microsoft. The company"s latest browser has not managed to gain traction among Windows 10 users despite being bundled with the operating system. The company will hope that the situation improves once it separates the Edge browser updates from the Windows 10 OS.
Sources: NetMarketShare, StatCounter
Editor"s note: This article was updated for accuracy regarding StatCounter figures. We apologize for the oversight.