Microsoft Edge poised to overtake Safari as second biggest desktop browser
Microsoft is narrowing the gap between Edge and Apple's Safari as the second most-used desktop browser in the world, with a change in position potentially happening within months.
Web browsing is dominated by Google Chrome, with it being the most popular desktop browser by a huge margin. However, in the closely-fought battle for second place, Apple's Safari may soon lose its position to Microsoft Edge.
The replacement to the once-dominant Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge has slowly gained an audience, according to StatCounter's Desktop Browser Market Share charts. Over the last year, it has moved from a 7.81-percent share in January 2021 to 9.54 percent in January 2021.
While this has helped it overtake Firefox already, doing so in March 2021, Edge has gradually seen its share increase over time, with January's data showing it has a 9.54 percent share. By contrast, Safari has stayed relatively stable over time, with it currently at a 9.84 percent share.
If Edge continues to increase in usage, it could gain enough share to unseat Safari from second place, pushing it into third. That could also result in Safari becoming fourth, as a resurgence of Mozilla Firefox put its January percentage at 9.18, within a close range of both Edge and Safari.
For reference, Google Chrome reported a 65.38 percent share in January 2022, its lowest in the last 12 months following its high of 68.76 percent in June.
On a regional basis, Safari is ahead of Edge by roughly 5 percentage points for North America, giving it a healthy amount of space. In Asia, Microsoft already leads with 7.46 percent to 5.41 percent, while in Europe, Safari lags behind at 9.95 percent to Edge's 10.9 percent and Firefox's 10.92 percent.
While Edge is a danger to Safari on desktops, Safari still continues to enjoy a sizable audience on tablets and smartphones. When examining all platforms globally, Safari is second overall at 19.84 percent, behind Chrome at 63.06 percent and ahead of both Firefox and Edge, at 4.18 percent and 4.12 percent respectively.
14 Comments
I had to use it for work for a while. It's ok, there really isn't much to choose between browsers in terms of functionality, save some small aesthetic preferences. I liked Edge's vertical tabs, disliked its typically Microsoft mess of a settings menu. I imagine its increase is largely due with enterprise upgrades rather than any actual mindset shift.
Safari on my MacBook Pro has issues with full screen video playback that causes lockups, so it's my second choice too, behind Brave.
Safari and most other browsers have seemed to reached a plateau in terms of functionality. My only big complaint about Safari at this point is that the “Frequently Visited” links are either dead, not ever showing up, or dormant, never updating, on nearly all versions of macOS, iPadOS, and iOS. The fact that this feature is so thoroughly broken leads me to believe that it’s really a server side issue with iCloud syncing rather than the browser apps. It’s been in this state for nearly a year and widely reported online, but Apple doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it. I thought that it may be related to Private Relay but changing that setting does not make any difference. Even the latest dev betas are broken. The sad state of this feature alone has made me switch over to Firefox as my primary browser because its equivalent functionality works fine.
I remember when Safari used to have a windows version
:s
My fourth thought is… I think Apple has it’s priorities straight.