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In the last decade the majority of the people around the globe have purchased and used mobile devices in their daily lives. Over the years the mobile experience has been described as taking over and possibly eliminating the web experience. However, this did not happen and the stats show that a large number of users are still using desktop browsers to book flights, rent Airbnb space, and purchase products online. When it comes to testing it’s important to understand what operating systems and browsers are most commonly used. As a result, we researched some statistics about Web browser usage to share with you our list of the top browsers.
What top browsers should you target for development and testing?
This question often comes up and the best answer is to know who your users are and where they are located. Depending who those users are, the browser and desktop OS will be different. Keep in mind that while you design and develop an application, a new browser version might come out by time you launch it.
We gathered information from various popular websites that specialize in browser information collection and discovered the following:
In North America, Chrome has 62% of the users on desktop and 41% on Mobile. Meanwhile, Safari comes first on Mobile OS with 52% of the users and second on Desktop/web with 15% of the users. Similarly, Chrome is first on Web in Europe with 63% of users, but also first on Mobile with 61% of users.
Testing on Chrome
In 2020 Google Chrome is the most popular in the world. Over the years Internet Explorer and Firefox have seen their user base drop while Chrome's has increased dramatically. In January 2020, Microsoft released a new version of Edge based on Chromium. Chromium is a free and open source software project from Google. Browsers such as Edge, Opera, and Amazon Silk are based on the Chromium code. Find out more about the new Edge Chromium browser here. In the animation below you can see how Chrome has grown over the years for both Mac and Windows users. Now Chrome is used by a majority of users on all platforms, especially Android. Meanwhile, IE is slowly increasing after years of losing market share.
Depending on the list of browsers on desktop and mobile devices you need to support, it will be challenging to test on everything. That’s why it’s best to have a reduced list of the top browsers to cover the majority of your users. When it comes to mobile apps testing, visit the other blog posts we have published in 2020.
If you are building a website or working on a desktop application, please feel free to reach out to us for advice or testing services.