UK Browser Usage

What is the extent of browser usage in the UK?

[strawbleu]

I've been searching on the 'net and don't seem to be able to find any modern figures to give an estimation of usage of various browser (and broswer/os) statistics for 'joe user' in the UK.

Does anyone have this - or anyone work on a large UK website in the consumer field that would be able to offer me %-based summary?

[BlobFisk]

Hey strawbleu,

I would say the the global figures available would be more or less accurate for the UK market. For detailed stats you'd probably have to pay a marketing company a lot of cash for a report on this...

[strawbleu]

Seems a bit silly really, when all we're looking for is percentages from stats most firms have anyway - wonder if you could find a few major sites willing to offer their stats anonymously to the greater good...

(hint hint)

[Lord Majestic]

or anyone work on a large UK website in the consumer field that would be able to offer me %-based summary?

Based on my experience (big UK B2C site) IE 5+ accounts for good 95% of visits. Recently Firefox share started growing, however it is still well below 10%, for now.

[davelms]

Here's my UK site's breakdown. Hopefully it adds up to 100%. We're not a huge site though, a few k unique visitors per day. Read into it what you will...

Explorer 86.57%
Firefox 4.04%
AOL 3.84%
Safari 1.51%
Netscape 1.42%
Mozilla 1.24%
Opera 0.61%
Firebird 0.44%
Konqueror 0.11%
Other 0.10%

[Hester]

Remember, in the university sector, browsers like Netscape 4 and 6.2 are still big.

[BlobFisk]

Remember, in the university sector, browsers like Netscape 4 and 6.2 are still big.

I wonder how pertinent this statistic is. I know that up until a few years ago it was true but I wonder know if this is the case?

Any universities that I've been to recently (and I readily admit that that's not too many!) have had big labs of PCs for the general student population (rather than *nix labs for IT students). I also saw that people were using IE to browse the web.

I think that universities have been upgrading their hardware a lot in the past 4 or so years and responding to the demand of students for lots of internet terminals. In my experience this has been met by buying lots of Windows running machines.

With this in mind I think that the IE/Mozilla are the two to watch and that the Netscape figure is slightly out of date...

[Hester]

See my latest thread for stats on Netscape 4:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[davelms]

I know it's a small site in general terms, but I'm the only one so far to have offered up some stats so maybe this helps put them in context - 5-10% of our visitors come from the student campus (x2, Leeds, UK), and I don't see either of them using Netscape broswers (any more).

[BlobFisk]

That's an interesting point, thanks davelms. It certainly supports my feeling that the educational sector is not the Netscape stronghold that it used to be...

[davelms]

Well, I see primarily XP and IE6 from the two Leeds campuses and one of our writers confirms this is the same set up at Trent (Nottingham). I'll just kick off a survey and ask around to find something more definite.

[BlobFisk]

If you feel like publishing those results here, I know that there would be a lot of interested and appreciative members! ;)

[encyclo]

In the universities, Netscape 4 is strong only on the UNIX workstations - of which there are fewer and fewer, and only in the scientific community - not in the general university audience.

Here is a breakdown of stats from August for one of my sites with an almost exclusively university audience, for a very scientific subject. Note: they are not UK stats, but mostly Canadian and US:

August 2004

INTERNET EXPLORER: 82.5%
Msie 6.0: 75.1 %
Msie 5.5: 0.7 %
Msie 5.23: 0.9 %
Msie 5.22: 1.7 %
Msie 5.15: 0.1 %
Msie 5.14: 0.5 %
Msie 5.13: 0.1 %
Msie 5.01: 1.2 %
Msie 5.0: 2.2 %

NETSCAPE: 6.2 %
Netscape 7.2: 0.1 %
Netscape 7.1: 3.5 %
Netscape 7.02: 0.9 %
Netscape 7.0: 1.5 %

Netscape 4.73: 0.1 %
Netscape 4.5: 0.1 %

OTHERS: 11.3 %
Mozilla: 4.3 %
Safari: 1.9 %
Unknown: 3.5 %
Opera: 1.3 %
Konqueror: 0.2 %
Firebird: 0.1 %

As you can see, Netscape 7 and Mozilla make up the bulk of the total of non-IE browsers, compared to Netscape 4.x at 0.2%. There was not one single hit from Netscape 6.x at all. Almost all of the IE versions which were not IE6 or 5.5 come from Mac rather than Windows.

One caveat: the number of "Unknown" browsers is rather high - but they are unlikely to be NN4, which is easily identifiable.

[strawbleu]

This is all interesting, however I'm really surprised that no one has set up a site to gather this sort of information.

Wouldn't take much to give a quick break down of browser OS breakdown for a few key user group types.

Or am I being too optimistic?

[davelms]

I would concur with encyclo's more detailed findings. I've just been looking at today, and its entirely XP and IE6 (confirmed so far by a few of our student visitors) - that's Leeds, Sheffield and Trent Universities thus far in the past hour or two, which granted is hardly conclusive. I would also agree with the comment regarding general usage clusters vs scientific clusters, and would bet my users come more from the general clusters which I have identified (and been told) are XP/IE6. Although the statistics above are Canadian/US, they appear like they may fit a UK profile also.

[encyclo]

I'm really surprised that no one has set up a site to gather this sort of information

Go for it ;) The challenge would be getting decent stats. I'm happy to give out basic details like the above for a non-commercial site, but I wouldn't share anything other than percentages, and I don't know whether many commercial clients would agree to even sharing that.

Note also Hester's thread in message #8: which goes to show that you can't generalize. Also, the site my stats come from serves an unstyled page to NN4 - perhaps the number would have been higher if NN4 was fully supported? I've seen in the past someone using NN4 as the email client, clicking on a link in an email, seeing that the site didn't work, and opening up IE instead to view the site.

[strawbleu]

Ok, I'll take up the challenge about time I gave something back ;-)

I want this to be fairly simple, however I think it could work if I ask people to register, giving some idea of their credentials, whilst maintaining anonymity online (which would be guaranteed from my side).

Each person supplying stats would have their own login and able to define the type of stats they were giving:

Geographic: Mainly North America, UK, Mainland Europe, Middle East, Far East, Antipodean, Central/Southern American, Global

Type: IT Industry, Creative Industry, Manufacturing Industry, Consumer, Business Services, News and Information, Directories and Search.

And then enter the following information:
Total #Hits (optional)
%ages for IE6 Win, IE5.5+ Win, IE 5+ Win, Other IE Win, IE5+ mac, IE other Mac, Safari, Mozilla, Opera
Month/Year of stats

Is there any other key information we would need to know or any requirements for such a system I haven't borne in mind?

Cheers, jon

[Hester]

I know of one UK university, Hull, where at least 400 users were converted to Netscape 6.2.

My site governs the north east universities and has always had a large number of Netscape 4 users. Hence I've always had to cater to them. But if the percentage drops low enough...

[pete_m]

strawbleu : I'd probably change the Total #Hits to Total Page Impressions - #Hits will include non-page files like images or stylesheets, and isn't really a good metric to compare websites.

For anyone who's interested, here's the browser breakdown on our UK-based e-commerce site. We sell items that appeal to most online consumers, not just students or techies.
These stats don't include my own browsing, otherwise Firefox would be higher :)

1st to 26th October 2004:

MSIE Total: 88.2%
Msie6.0: 75.9%
Msie5.5: 4.8%
Msie5.01: 2.5%
Msie5.0: 2.6%

Others: 11.8%
Unknown: 3.7%
Firefox: 2.3%
Safari: 1.7%
Mozilla: 1.5%
Netscape: 1.4%
Opera: 0.6%

(edited to make more readable)

[technossomy]

For informational purposes only, a website that posts browser usage figures and statistics is:

[w3schools.com...]

Also, [netcraft.com...] has related information on internet statistics.