StatCounter Global Stats, which looks browser market share by browser and not by version, shows Internet Explorer occupying just below 50%, down from nearly 60% a year ago.

When you look at the browser wars on a more regional level, IE is still above 50% in North America, while it has dropped as low as 40% in Europe. In Asia, IE is even more dominant, with nearly 60% of the market. Almost universally, Firefox holds a strong position in second place. Worldwide, Chrome holds the third spot easily, though the browser battles it out with Safari in North America.

As ReadWriteWeb noted when G1 was released in September, the default browser isn't Google's Chrome - but Web-Kit, which is "Chrome-like". However Sergey Brin confirmed in early September that Chrome will be coming to Android in subsequent versions.

See last100's full post for more details of the current browser in G1.

Despite it being very early in the testing stages, the Fennec browser is already showing major performance gains. In the chart below, found on Mozilla technical evangelist Chirs Blizzard's blog, the blue bar is the "MicroB browser," which is the Mozilla-based browser based on source code from around the Firefox Alpha 1 timeframe that Nokia included with their OS2008 release. The red bar is Fennec. The chart shows that Fennec is 5.9x faster than the earlier Mozilla version!

Although Firefox enthusiasts may be tempted to try out Fennec now, they should be warned that much of the new browser's functionality isn't seen via the UI just yet - it's all very much still "under the hood."

However, this quick peek is enough to get us excited about Firefox Mobile and the features it plans to include in the future, like support for add-ons, support for web applications, an AwesomeBar, one-click bookmarking, and inertial scrolling - the last two of which are currently available in the Fennec browser. We only hope we don't have to wait too long before a solid beta is available.

Mobile Web browsers - Microsoft's downfall?: As we begin to use mobile devices more and more to access the Web, Microsoft's browser dominance may begin to ebb away. 2008-09 is predicted to be when the Mobile Internet hits big. So who are the early leaders in the mobile web browsing market? PC browser battler Opera is styling itself as "the world leader in mobile browsing technologies". In August this year, Opera Software launched Opera Mini - a browser for mobile phones. They also recently released a mobile AJAX Platform product, which impressed mobile expert Russell Beattie. Nokia has a product called Web Browser for S60, for browsing on a range of Nokia phones. Microsoft has its Smart Phone and Firefox has a mobile browser called Minimo. There have even been hints at a Yahoo! mobile browser.
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Browser Wars 2006 - Microsoft set to continue dominance: IE has been losing ground to Firefox over the past year and most tech bloggers (including me) report a higher percentage of Firefox than IE users. However in the mass market, IE is still by far the dominant browser. According to Web analytics company OneStat.com, as of late October 2005 almost 81 percent of Americans used IE, 14 percent used Firefox, and only a small percentage used Opera, Netscape, and all other browsers combined.
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The breach, which was confirmed by CNet today, affects the security of encrypted data accessed over HTTPS, in addition to raising privacy issues.

An initial attempt to fix the problem was unsuccessful, but MoboTap pushed out a second update pushed out today claims to have resolved the issue.

Dolphin had long been a popular browser among Android users when it launched on iOS earlier this year.

I'd suggest then that the takeaway from the results so far is that people a) want the browser to remain the main platform for deploying web apps; and b) preferably they'd like it to be open source.

Here are the results so far. We've had 470 votes up till time of publishing this post, but there are still 3 days left in the week - so have your say by voting below.

Qst: Whose vision of web app deployment do you like the best?

Mozilla (open source, microformats, browser-based) 35% (166 votes)
Google (Ajax, mostly browser-based) 29% (135 votes)
Adobe (Apollo, browser/desktop) 22% (102 votes)
Microsoft (Silverlight, DotNet, browser/desktop) 11% (50 votes)
Sun (JavaFX, alternative to Ajax, browser/desktop) 2% (10 votes)
Other (please note in comments) 1% (7 votes)

I've been re-reading Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee. As inventer of the World Wide Web in 1990 and current director of the W3C, Berners-Lee is a visionary and innovator. His current obsession, the Semantic Web, is not yet widely understood or appreciated. Just like the Web 10 years ago. 

Indeed one of Berners-Lee's earliest Web innovations has still not been widely implemented, more than 10 years after he created it along with the World Wide Web. This invention was intended to be one of the foundation products of the Web, but it never took off. In 2003 the need for this product is more relevant than ever, at a time when "social software" and "collaboration" are the buzzwords of the Web. I'm talking about the Read/Write web browser, or the "web browser/editor" as Berners-Lee refers to it in his book.

The original web in 1990 was made up of a server at CERN (info.cern.ch) , and the 3 protocols URIs, HTTP and HTML. Berners-Lee also created a browser/editor with which to both view the web and create content for it. His browser/editor was actually called WorldWideWeb. As Berners-Lee described it - "the browser would decode URIs, and let me read, write, or edit Web pages in HTML". However during that period, 1990-93, Berners-Lee was frustrated that nobody else seemed willing to create a browser/editor. At best existing browsers were read-only and mostly text-only too.

Then in 1993 the Mosiac web browser was released - its graphical interface was its defining feature. Succeeding generations of web browsers, Netscape and Microsoft in particular, introduced new graphical and interactive features like tables, forms, and stylesheets. However writing and editing functionality for the browser were overlooked.

Berners-Lee's dream for a read/write browser remains unfulfilled to this day, although the advent of weblogs has lowered the barrier for people to write to the web. The open-source Mozilla browser has some interactive editing functionality. But Microsoft, with over 90% of the browser market, is showing little sign of further browser innovation. There has also been talk of a non-browser environment for the Web - co-called Rich Internet Applications or microcontent clients. But right here right now, most of us still surf the web with a web browser that is read-only.

Browsing is only half the fun. Contributing something new to the Web, to the world, is where the real rewards are. Berners-Lee of course sums it up best: "I have always imagined the information space (the Web) as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create."

Over the next week, I'll explore what few web browser/editor tools there are available. First of all I'll check out Amaya, which is the W3C's browser/editor. Stay tuned...

Dolphin and Evernote are teaming up to release two extensions to Dolphin's Android browser. The first and most exciting is powerful and popular Web-based image editor Skitch. The other is Evernote itself. These new functions are the first time that Evernote has reached out to a third-party Android browser.

Skitch as a stand-alone photo editor is only nominally interesting. Add it to the Web with browser-based functionality and it becomes a very powerful tool.

The other half of the announcement is not quite as exciting. Evernote for Dolphin Android is another step in Evernote's quest to be everywhere. Literally everywhere. Evernote is amazing at designing and shipping new products almost every week, whether it is a new mobile extension, a desktop extension, a new app like Hello or the integration of Skitch and other acquisitions into other products. Evernote for Dolphin will work in exactly the same way that any of its other browser extensions do: find content on the Web that you want to clip and save it to Evernote. This time, the content is from a mobile device.

There is a lot of competition between Android browsers. The top three are probably the stock Android browser shipped with every device, Dolphin and Opera. While the stock Android browser has not historically been a top tier performer, it looks like it got quite a bit better with the release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Dolphin calls itself the first "gesture-based" mobile browser while Opera delivers speed and the ability to trim down on data usage.

Dolphin has recently started adding extensions to its Android browser and that may put it ahead of Opera for the time being. Dolphin for Android now has Skitch, Evernote, Box, ReadItLater, eBay Search and more (a couple dozen, not all relevant). Opera mobile does not yet do browser extensions.

Presumably there's some money changing hands and we can't help but wonder how much. It's Google's payment to Mozilla for being the default search engine in Firefox that makes that browser financially viable.

Some people say (only partly in jest) that Google does in fact own a browser - Firefox. Have deals gone on behind the scenes than mean Google now effectively owns a mobile browser too? These up-front payments for default placement are later more than made up for through search ad click throughs - and mobile is a key emerging market in search advertising.

In this case there is probably not a major shift in power going on over Opera, since the company has what should be a major revenue stream in the sale of browser installs themselves. For some reason, people are willing to pay for a better mobile browser despite widespread insistence that web and desktop software should be free. A large portion of Opera customers are Europeans, though, so perhaps that explains it.

None the less, it was probably seen at Google as a major coup to score this deal and they may have been willing to spend a lot of money on it. If Safari on the iPhone is the elite upper class mobile browser, Opera is the browser of the growing middle class in that space.

Opera users in general tend to be vehement advocates of the browser. While Firefox users will sometimes go to the trouble of telling you how much they like their browser, the smaller number of Opera fans are much more outspoken. I could comfortably hold my breath between putting up this post and the time that it will take for an Opera lover to post a comment about how wonderful this fast, standards compliant browser is on the desktop and the phone. (Please don't prove me wrong.)

For more informed coverage of this news see the blog of mobile search specialists MSearchGroove, where presumably it will be covered soon. Readers interested in mobile news should check out the RWW toolkit for 2008, a package of resources for tracking key issues like mobile in the coming year.

Net Applications thinks that that the U.S. election, the Thanksgiving holiday, the rising unemployment in the U.S., and the extra weekend in November led to an increase in residential browsing during that month, but the general trends clearly also continued during December.

Will IE8 Make a Difference?

It will be interesting to see if the upcoming release of IE8 will be enough to turn Microsoft's fortunes in the browser market around. While we like the beta version of IE8 as a general purpose browser, it still doesn't have the extensibility and speed of Firefox. Google is also working on an extension architecture for Chrome, which will allow developers to port their Firefox plugins over to Google's browser and give users even more alternatives to IE7 and IE8.

While 50 million desktop users means just a tiny fraction of the browser market for home users, 50 million mobile users actually represents a dominance in the mobile browser market.

According to the latest numbers by StatCounter, Opera for the desktop comes in fifth (essentially last) place, behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Opera accounts for just under 2% of the browser market, while IE holds 53% of the market share, and Firefox comes in around 32%. Safari, Opera's nearest competitor (and default Mac browser) accounts for twice as many users as Opera.

Looking at the mobile browser numbers, on the other hand, we see Opera Mini with 28% and iPhone's native browser following with just under 20%. And all of that could change, of course, if Apple would just accept Opera Mini into the AppStore. Opera submitted its mobile browser just under three weeks ago at the time of this writing, but has a policy that prevents other browsers from operating on the iPhone.

While the numbers seem to say that Opera just isn't cutting it on the desktop, Opera Mini has been holding the lead as far as mobile browsing goes and we'd sure love to see it on the iPhone sometime in the near future.

The decision puts IBM's nearly 400,000 employees solidly in Mozilla's court, adding yet another vote of confidence for the worlds number two browser.

Sutor reasoned that the switchover to Firefox was supported by five basic facts:

Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM's strategy. Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity. Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it. Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM. Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.

Beyond IBM's workforce, the 99-year-old tech company will "strongly encourage our vendors who have browser-based software to fully support Firefox" as well as install it as default on all new computers. Sutor also cites the shift to cloud computing as a large reason for IBM's move to Firefox, saying that "open standards must be used in the infrastructure" and that Firefox will help with this.

Don Park reckons that weblogs and websites will converge within the next 2 years time:

"People [will] take it for granted that webpages can be edited using their browser. People will also take it for granted that any webpages can be subscribed to with a single-click. Web browsers will be changed to support all this and more like highlighting of changes."

Don is basically talking about browser/editors, which Tim Berners-Lee has always promoted and which is one of my pet topics. The W3C has one of the few WYSIWYG browser/editors around, called Amaya. But in order to write and edit content using Amaya, you need to publish with the HTTP PUT method which most web hosts won't support.

I'd love to see a mainstream web browser/editor on the Web. But as I talked about in yesterday's post, it looks like "Smart Clients" are about to usurp the browser in terms of providing interactive functionality. Smart Clients may be where all the writing/editing action is in 2 years time.

Jon Udell is exploring ways to write semantic content for the Web, which in the short term means XHTML. Microsoft is leaning towards Office tools for that type of writing - e.g. InfoPath and the next version of Word. I'd be surprised if Microsoft changed tack and moved XML writing functionality into the browser (which will be embedded in the OS in future).

So Don, I share your enthusiasm for a true web browser/editor. But I don't think it's even a glint in the milkman's eye for Microsoft.

Full Internet browsers will be on all smartphones and a "growing number of enhanced (or feature) phones," says Senior Analyst Mark Beccue in the release. The other type of browser - the proxy-based browser - requires very little memory and processing power and "can be used on even the lowest-cost phones." The most well-known example of a proxy-based browser is Opera Mini, which downloads highly-compressed versions of Web pages from a proxy server to increase speed and performance.

While the release states that "the installed base of full Internet browsers will exceed that of proxy-based browsers sometime in 2012," the continued explosion of the mobile Web is good news for companies like Opera. The browser company reported last week that the mobile Web ub Africa was continuing to see triple-digit growth and much of it was based on low cost phones.

At the same time, the company is celebrating its continued dominance in the browser market, calling IE8 "the fastest growing browser worldwide."

According to Net Applications' August numbers, Internet Explorer 8 grew by just over 1% to account for 32% of the browser market worldwide and it's growth was nearly three times that of Google Chrome.

As we noted when looking at similar numbers last February, Net Applications doesn't always agree with other browser stat sites, such as StatCounter, which shows IE8 dropping by 1% over the past month and IE6 actually increasing its share by 1%.

Perhaps the most interesting statistic to note from Net Applications, however, is one involving IE6 and China. There, the browser we all love to hate continues to hold 46% of the market (just over 50% if you include various editions of IE6), which the company says is "significantly skewing global share". Overall, however, Net Applications finds that IE6 has declined by 1%, bringing its share to just under 17% worldwide.

Of course, all of this may change when Microsoft releases the beta of its latest browser, IE9, which looks to bring the company into the future with a clean-cut, slimmed down design and a number of advanced features.

What do you think - what will the browser market look like when Microsoft brings out the latest? Will Chrome continue its climb? And will IE9 take over the top spot from IE8?