Browser Market Share: Maxthon May Stop Firefox's Slow Climb
The latest browser stats are causing some discussion - mainly because of this article by InformationWeek, which pours water over Microsoft's claims about IE7:
"Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn't had an impact on Firefox's continued climb."
According to Net Applications, the browser share is slowly - but surely - moving down for IE and up for Firefox:
What's curious though is that Maxthon isn't showing up in any of these browser share reports. We noted in a recent post that Maxthon reportedly has 30% of the browser market in its home country of China, second only to IE and ahead of Firefox. China is the second-biggest Web market in the world, not far behind the US and projected to pass it in the not too distant future. So if Maxthon has 30% of the China browser market (and I have to say I've yet to see any report confirming that figure), then surely it would rank pretty well on browser share reports that companies like Net Applications and WebSideStory produce? Perhaps they are not measuring international markets - but they should.
The Linux Journal puts it very well, noting that Maxthon's installed base is probably already near that of Firefox:
"Put that figure [Maxthon's 30% of the Chinese browser market] together with the fact that there are currently 132 million Internet users in China, up 30% from last year, and likely to grow even more in the future, and you have a situation where Maxthon's installed base probably already rivals that of Firefox."
Maxthon may struggle though to make a mark on the rest of the world. On the previous R/WW post about Maxthon, Jeremy Liew (an ex-GM of Netscape) left this comment:
"We found that in the minds of the public there is only room for two browsers: the default and one alternative. Maxathon is the default option in China. Firefox is the default in most of the rest of the world. I think it will be hard for Maxathon to make too much headway in the rest of the world - they may find themselves competing against Firefox more than they compete against IE."
The bottom line: will Maxthon eventually affect Firefox's market share? I agree with Jeremy that Maxthon is more a of threat to Firefox than IE, despite being built on IE technology. And (ahem) check out the most recent post on the Maxthon blog, entitled: Watch out Firefox - Here Comes Maxthon! :-) OK, to be fair that title was taken from another blog.
Do you think Maxthon is set to burst Firefox's browser market share bubble? Firefox may well have little to worry about in the Western market, but globally the Asia market is increasingly important. So browser market share in China is crucial.
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Presumably the issue with getting stastics results from the fact that, as it uses the IE rendering engine, it's user agent is the same as that of IE.
I think the success of Maxthon, despite being built on a rubbish rendering engine, shows that what really matters to consumers are 'cool features', not web standards compliance. Firefox needs to make sure it advances compliance (so that it reaps long term benefits) without forgetting that they need to have features which will appeal to the mainstream. The challenge is coming up with those features, and getting the balance right between what is included by default and what is put into extensions.
Joining Huw above, I also wondered if the footprint Maxthon leaves says it's IE - Just like Opera, where it's selectable, but the default is IE, so by definition Opera's share is underrated, too.
I have my doubts that they will take the place of Firefox, mainly because I think there is a lot of "fundamental" opposition to anything Microsoft, and this would include anything built on IE.
How to compare or even trying to merge asian market and our occidental market? this is just impossible, Asia will be always "another world" Maxthon might stay ahead of Firefox, like Yahoo is in front of google in Japan, as the biggest brands we have in the Us or elsewhere are just non existing in some countries of Asia...
Maxthon will never put a shadow on our occidental market of browser, but they might conquer China and other countries...why not...
"... China is the second-biggest Web market in the world"
Well Richard, I won't be so sure about that, we have to assume also that a lot of those user only use internet in Cyber cafe with no possibilities to set up whatever browser... I still do not thing that this can be comparable to our market to say "this is the 2nd biggest market" it is also interesting to notice that Maxthon doesn't touch the Korean market or the japanese market, and those countries might be more interesting stats to get from...
The question that crosses my mind about Maxthon is one I haven't heard asked yet - How many browser stat counters are looking for it? Since it's built on top of IE, then the "MSIE 7.0" in the UA string is probably what most stat catchers are looking for and as soon as they find it, they ignore everything else in the string unless it says "Opera" or "AOL". So Maxthon could theoretically already be somewhat pervasive, and we don't have a clue, 'cause nobody's looking for it.
There's no way to know what Maxthon's power on the net will be without the major stat places actually checking for it. Then again, to most developers, it doesn't matter since the only thing that matters is which rendering engine is reading the website.
I would also question whether the number of Maxthon browsers is getting measured properly. Looking at the traffic stats for our site (Recruit.net, a pan-Asian job search engine) shows 88.8% share for IE, 7.9% for Firefox and almost totally negligible for Maxthon. And we get a lot of traffic out of China.
If this is an issue that Maxthon can deal with - having traffic stats software recognize their browser - then they should do so.
There must be something Maxthon can do to make sure they're being tracked, it's crazy if they're not being counted due to the user agent.
Richard, we have for long time neglected the fact that we are not being properly tracked. I guess the main reason is that we have been totally consumed by creating a better browser and a better user experience. Having said that, I am postive that we will show up in the offical browser statistics during 2007.
A standard Maxthon user agent string:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Maxthon; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Maxthon 2.0)
That would most likely be counted as an IE user, is my guess.
I've been using Maxthon right from the early days, when it was MYE2. The features it offered and still offers is definitely better than Firefox. And its also a lot lighter on the system.