Hey, Apple, Google Chrome Is Kicking Safari's Ass

The big risk to Apple's integrated hardware-software gadget strategy is that it will eventually lead to the same fate that almost killed the company last time: marginalization in a niche "premium" market while the rest of the world standardizes around a more ubiquitous platform.

Last time, the software platform that killed Apple was Microsoft's Windows. This time, the software platform that is threatening to kill Apple is Google's Android/Chrome.

Apple fans howl with derision at the suggestion that this could be deja vu all over again. Apple is CRUSHING everyone, they point out. The iPhone is way better than any Android phone. The App Store is miles ahead of the competition. The joy of Macs and iPads are the seamless integration of hardware and software. And so on.

And that's fine. Apple does have a big lead here, and the gadget market is different in some key ways than the PC market was (vendor fragmentation, carrier control--for now, more apps, lighter apps, Android fragmentation, payments, and so on).

But the threat remains.

And to get a sense of how real this threat is, you need look no farther than the browser market. Specifically, you need to look at how much share Google's 20-month old Chrome browser has gained relative to Apple's Safari--despite the world's having gone hog wild for Apple's sexy integrated devices over that period.

Over the past 20 months, Chrome's browser market share has gone from 0% to 7%. Apple Safari's market share, meanwhile, has gone from 3% to 5%. (See the detailed share shifts here).

Extrapolate those trends for a few more years, and Apple will be left with the same thing it was eventually left with in the PC market: a niche. Google, meanwhile, will be on its way to overtaking Microsoft and Firefox.

See Also: Apple Versus Google -- The Next 10 Battles To Watch

 

Follow Henry Blodget on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hblodget

Comments

[hagagaga]

08:42 AM on 05/07/2010

Firefox is better.

[wilray]

04:51 PM on 05/10/2010

Chrome uses less browser chrome than FF
it's faster
uses less system resources
Manages extensions much better than FF (FF does have more extensions available though)
Manages tab browsing better (if one tab crashes, it does not bring down the whole browser)

[flamenco]

04:28 PM on 05/06/2010

I would be glad to see Safari wane and fade out. As a web developer, its text-handling is irritating, as it's so different from other browsers. It's also too slow, and many apps do not work with it. My Mac work cohorts use FF and Chrome now instead of that.

[Sean in Sixty Seconds]

02:53 PM on 05/06/2010

Hmmm maybe I should download Chrome for my mac? Oh, wait Safari is giving me no problems...

Sean in 60
http://www.seaninsixtyseconds.com

[hagagaga]

08:42 AM on 05/07/2010

No, you should get rid of your Mac and trade style for a huge increase in quality.

[wilray]

03:25 PM on 05/10/2010

I had Safari just to check it for web design. However, its market share has remained low, so I took Safari off as an unneeded nuisance. Safari has even less market share among the tech savvy. As Chrome continues to gain market share, the eventual slugout will be between Chrome and Firefox.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

[SeanOcali2]

01:32 PM on 05/06/2010

Does anyone actually believe Apple's success hinges on Safari? Do they even really are about Safari? If they're at a point where in 5 years, Chrome becomes the default Mac and iPhone browser and Safari is discontinued, is that going to really cost Apple a dime in profit? The browser wars in the 90s were about controlling web standards. It's not like they make money off them.

[A ScottMiller]

03:17 AM on 05/07/2010

You're definitely right.

I too love Apple products. But hopefully one day the brand-loyal nuts will stop paying twice the product's actual customer value, and doing Apple's R&D for them at the same time! Everyone knows not to buy a first or second generation Apple device, right?

[ThatsTheTheWayItIs]

10:59 AM on 05/06/2010

I respectfully suggest that CEO business-types leave discussion of tech trends to us geeks.

[macmanchgo]

09:44 AM on 05/06/2010

Chrome is so yesterday, Opera is the new browser, who cares anyway?
Apple haters are a bit like teabaggers, so shrill.

[MorpheusXNYC]

02:59 PM on 05/06/2010

LMAO.. Opera is the new browser! Analog is the new digital! Riiiight..

[hagagaga]

08:43 AM on 05/07/2010

I find that second sentence to be one of the most offensive things you could ever say to me.

[apexfork]

09:41 AM on 05/06/2010

And how much money is there in the browser market? None.

[dubious63]

09:39 AM on 05/06/2010

Not having anything from Apple other than and iPod (which was obsolete 2 months after I bought it) I won't comment on Apple.

Having been an IE hater for quite a while now I have tried many browsers including Safari and Firefox. Safari just didn't do it for me and I became a big Firefox fan. For the past few years it was great, very fast and dependable. But, something happened last year. It froze constantly (usually right before they had an upgrade), and became increasingly slower.

I decided to give Google's Chrome a try...WOW! What a huge difference. Screamingly fast! It is the best browser I have ever used. Now if they can avoid whatever Mozilla did to Firefox I'll be a happy camper.

If you haven't tried it yet, get over to Google and download it pronto, you'll be amazed!

[SeanOcali2]

01:33 PM on 05/06/2010

I'm glad someone else noticed how bloated and awful Firefox has become.

[rektruax]

08:52 AM on 05/06/2010

It's fast... yet buggy.

[dubious63]

09:43 AM on 05/06/2010

The only buggy thing I've run into is that, on some sites, it has a problem with inputing CAPTCHA phrases.

[ringmaster]

08:49 AM on 05/06/2010

Would be nice if they had included AO 10.4 users.

[auramac]

08:24 AM on 05/06/2010

Doesn't HP know there are Glenn Becks in the tech world, too? What a nonsense article!

[Ira7]

08:35 AM on 05/06/2010

Fanned.

[Ira7]

05:50 AM on 05/06/2010

Ah yes--yet another article about Apple's imminent demise.

It must be Spring.

[nightwind928]

12:37 AM on 05/06/2010

I'm no "tekki" by any stretch of the imagination. But I know what I like. Google Chrome is the best thing to happen to my computer in a long, long time. It's fast, safe and easy to use and thats all that I, and most users, need.

[superstition]

11:39 PM on 05/05/2010

False dilemma?

"WebKit is an open source web browser engine originally derived by Apple Inc. from the Konqueror browser’s KHTML software library for use as the engine of Mac OS X’s Safari web browser and has now been further developed by individuals from the KDE project, Apple Inc., Nokia, Google, Bitstream, Torch Mobile and others.

The code that would become WebKit began in 1998 as the KDE project’s HTML layout engine KHTML and KDE's JavaScript engine (KJS).

The name and project 'WebKit' were created in 2002 when Apple Inc. created a fork of KHTML and KJS. Apple developers explained in an e-mail to KDE developers that these engines allowed easier development than other technologies...

WebKit is used as the rendering engine within Safari on Windows, Mac OS X and iPhone OS. Other applications on Mac OS X can make use of WebKit, for example Apple's e-mail client Mail and the 2008 version of Microsoft's Entourage personal information manager both make use of WebKit to render e-mail messages with HTML content.

New web browsers have been built around WebKit such as the S60 browser on Symbian mobile phones, Midori, Shiira, Google's Chrome browser, Uzbl, Maxthon 3 and the Android Web browser."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit

[candyer]

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