[avallark]

Chrome beats IE market share. It showed that over the weekend Chrome is the most used browser, while on a weekday, people go back to work and use IE. This has two implications: 1) Companies are still locked into some solutions like OWA and sharepoint because of which users still use IE at work. 2) Users have started distinguishing between browsers and at home they prefer using Chrome.

For companies with most of their clients using their own personal computers (like for us), we could expect a fair share of Chrome over IE and hence the following: 1) Our QA should have a major focus on testing with these browsers. 2) Architecture needs to focus on this stat. as a guiding principle while deciding future architecture.

Another interesting statistics is the second screenshot with the Mobile Operating systems. 1) The highest share of internet browsers still run a Nokia Symbian phone. Most likely these are traffic from developing countries, where monetizing from these clients is extremely difficult. 2) iPhone and Android are tied and very close.

So focusing only on iPhone could be a mistake. We need to open up to focusing on Android just as much.

[RyanMcGreal]

> Companies are still locked into some solutions like OWA and sharepoint because of which users still use IE at work.

My hunch is that a lot of companies are locked into legacy internal web applications that were optimized for IE6 and look like crap in a modern browser.

[freehunter]

Even worse is a handful of web apps we use at work are coded specifically for Firefox. Firefox 3.6. They don't work in IE, Chrome, or newer Firefox versions.

Then we have some other ones that only support IE 6 and 7. My laptop only has 1GB of RAM. Yeah...

[Produce]

1GB of RAM on a work computer? I'd flat out refuse to do anything until they fork out a whopping £30 to quadruple that.

[freehunter]

Sorry, I've edited this post. The original felt like an off topic rant.

Long story short, we're moving to BYOD soon, and until then I'm using a backup laptop from years ago since I'm pretty low on the food chain here.

[avallark]

From experience, our organization use OWA (outlook web access). The only way we can change password for my email id is on OWA and that works only on IE!

[Karunamon]

Thought it would be worth mentioning, newer versions of OWA (14.2.247.0, at my workplace, the latest and greatest MS Exchange) explicitly support Chrome, but there is some silverlight in there. This is using the full featured interface, not the crippled "light" version. Firefox too.

[jader201]

> It showed that over the weekend Chrome is the most used browser, while on a weekday, people go back to work and use IE. This has two implications: 1) Companies are still locked into some solutions like OWA and sharepoint because of which users still use IE at work. 2) Users have started distinguishing between browsers and at home they prefer using Chrome.

I think you're overlooking a third possibility: a large percentage of those using IE during the weekdays are people that just use the "default" Windows browser while at work. While at home, they just don't use computers or get online, or at least not near as much as they do while at work.

I wonder if this may be the more likely cause.

[avallark]

good point. Mostly administrative staff.

I think of interest to web startups would be the aspect of which browser is being used by those people who are willing to buy products based on the internet and those do not tend to be people who use IE. I am excluding buying things like ebay, amazon etc.

If you consider buying internet based things, like basecamp for e.g., you could see that this population would mostly use chrome, firefox or safari. This is purely my intuition, mainly because if people care about using an internet based product, they would want the product looks good, works well and is fast on their browsers and they will thus be using one of the better browsers.

[kgosser]

Oh, those poor enterprise developers, such as myself. Everyone can talk all they want about the real world, but it's astounding how big corporations still have their battered employees using IE6.

And I have to develop to that, while all you folks get to build for WebKit. Not fair!

Anyways, I feel like those percentages don't tell a good story. Many of us are still locked into supporting IE6.

[railsjedi]

Any luck with Chrome Frame? I've pushed that fairly successfully at previous clients. FUD aside (from MS mainly), it's really a great solution I think for anyone forced to deal with legacy IE6 installs.

http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

[RossP]

SharePoint is cross-browser, at least as of SharePoint 2010. I don't believe any functions require IE.

Disclaimer: I work for an MS partner, while I don't admin SharePoint our company does plenty of SharePoint work and our clients are happy.

[edwinnathaniel]

You need IE for some of its feature such as Datasheet View, multiple file upload, etc.

They don't show up in Chrome. But that doesn't mean you can use Chrome. Just less productive.

[RossP]

Thanks for the clarification - the SP platform is still perfectly usable in non-IE browsers, although as you say a few nice things aren't available.

[avallark]

Surely you jest!