14 DAY TRIAL // On June 11, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, announced the availability of Safari 3.0 public beta for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista. The move is designed not only to offer developers the minimal level of support for the iPhone but also to open Safari's horizon outside of the Mac platform. Job's keynote at Worldwide Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco revealed an insight into Apple's ambitions for the Safari browser, nothing short of market domination together with Internet Explorer, a strategy strongly criticized by John Lilly, Mozilla's Chief Operating Officer.
However, at the end of Safari's first (almost whole) month on Windows, Apple's browser has lost a consistent amount of audience, according to statistics made available by Market Share by Net Applications. The Internet metrics company indicated that, at the end of June 2007, Safari accounted for 4.49% of the browser market dropping from 4.82% in May. Safari has experienced a similar drop in February, following Windows Vista's general launch on January 30. Still, moving to Windows, and breaking the limitations of the Mac OS X should not have been a gambit for Apple. The Cupertino-based company indeed applauded 1 million Safari 3 downloads in the first 48 hours, and the browser does account for a share of no less than 0.18%; nonetheless, Apple's browser was no match for rivals.
Market Share by Net Applications indicates that all editions of Safari with the exception of version 3 for Vista, XP and Leopard have lost market share in the past month. With Mozilla Firefox stagnating at 14.5% for two months now, only Internet Explorer and Opera have experienced growth in June. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 is growing slowly but steadily after an initial explosion after the launch in October 2006, and Opera has caught a breath of fresh air jumping from 0.74% to 0.91%. IE is at 78.84% of the browser market and gaining momentum.
Another set of statistics, but this time from OneStat, shows that Safari's global usage share has not diminished, contradicting the data from Market Share by Net Applications. Safari's global usage share is even increasing, although the general trend is to stagnate. OneStat revealed that Safari has grown from 1.64% in January to 1.79% in June 2007.