14 DAY TRIAL // Safari is not a newcomer when it comes to the browser market. As a matter of fact Safari is an established presence thanks to the bundle with the Mac operating systems. Back in 2003, the intimate connection between Safari and Mac OS have convinced Microsoft to stop all development efforts that the Redmond Company made into Internet Explorer 5 for Mac, and subsequently to drop support altogether. Now, with Safari 3 public beta, Apple is taking on the Windows platform.
Delivering compatibility with both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista and Windows XP, Safari 3 has made on June 11 2007 its first steps onto the Windows platform. At the end of May 2007, according to statistics published by Market Share by Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounted for a percentage of 78.67 of the browser market. Firefox was runner up with a share of 14.54%, and Safari was third with just 4.82%. However, Safari's share comes inherently with the Mac operating system. Otherwise, Safari is the ultimate underdog on Windows, starting from zero.
Safari's main rivals will be Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0. Opera 9 is also presented as a potential competitor but this claim is not legitimate as the browser only holds a niche of 0.73% of the browser market. In this context, IE7 is up to 31.26% and Firefox 2.0 has 10.02%. Long-time survivors IE6 and Firefox 1.5 are still strong presences with 46.76% and 3.80% respectively. Still, the adoption of Safari 3 will impact directly Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. But it is not a question of downloading Safari and installing the browser. It is a question of how convincing Safari will be to Windows users.
Microsoft's share of the browser market is protected by the association between Internet Explorer and Windows Vista. Firefox and Opera will be the browsers most hurt by Apple's presence on Windows. But this is not to say that IE won't bleed.