In the last few months Microsoft’s Edge browser has gained some popularity along with gains in usage and user share but it has a long way to go before becoming a competitor for Firefox or Chrome. Only a tiny minority of users use Window 10’s default browser for their surfing needs.
Is Microsoft Edge Becoming Popular?
Edge is the default browser for Windows 10 and interestingly enough it grew its user share in recent months. Net applications is a company that deals with vendor analytics – the company’s results state that Edge recently went up by five points, effectively gaining a share of 30.7% of users running Windows 10. Back in January the percentage was much lower, at 26%.
This is the first time since 2015 that Net Applications reported an increase in Edge’s usage for Windows 10 users. Before this sudden increase, Net Applications reported steady decline in use and usage for Windows 10’s default browser.
DAP's Report on Edge
DAP or the Digital Analytics Program also reported an increase in Edge’s usage but at a smaller percentage than that reported by Net Applications. DAP reported that only 24.9% of Windows 10 users actually use the Edge browser – this is just a five tenths of a percentage increase as compared to Net Application report of 5%.
Digital Analytics Program visits over 4000 websites on over 500 domains from the United States. Their report is based mostly on US users even though some visitors access these websites from other parts of the world.
StatCounter is another metrics company based in Ireland – StartCounter also reported an increase in Edge usage in the previous months. Edge’s share of Windows 10 users was set at 17.1, three tenths of a percentage increase from previous months. In the same time, Edge’s global usage share for Windows 10 users did not increase at all and stayed at 13.3%, data showed.
Safari Fares Much Better
Edge’s inability to attract Windows 10 users has stunned Microsoft as well – the majority of users usually rely on the OS default browser for their surfing needs but this is not the case for Windows. Mac users for example use the default Safari browser at a much higher percentage – two thirds of all OS X users use Safari on a daily basis.
The reason behind Windows 10’s default browser Edge is its incomplete functionality. Microsoft launched it without support for add ons and its appearance hasn’t improved from the old Internet Explorer which was never popular to begin with.
