Do We Really Need Another Windows Browser?
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This afternoon Apple released the first Windows version, in beta, of the Safari Web browser. What's that saying about two's company, three's a crowd? |
Apple's Windows browser ambitions are more complex than stated by CEO Steve Jobs during today's World Wide Developer conference keynote. Jobs positioned Safari for Windows as a way of increasing the browser's market share. Maybe. But I see broader ambitions related to iPhone, desktop synchronization and Web development for iPhone.
In another announcement, Jobs revealed that the iPhone development opportunity would be limited to Web 2.0, mainly meaning AJAX The iPhone Web browser is Safari. Now that browser will be available for the Mac and Windows, giving developers tools for better compatibility testing and a volume platform for cross-platform Safari applications.
After formulating my analysis, I found that my former JupiterResearch colleague Michael Gartenberg reached a similar conclusion. In his blog today he wrote: "Apple also announced that Safari will be the gateway to the iPhone for developers (at least for now) and that means that it's important for Apple to be on the Windows platform as well as Mac OS."
The Safari beta is a surprising stranger in the Windows World. It's as if Apple brought a piece of Mac OS X to Windows. Safari is such a Windows alien, end users can choose from only the Google and Yahoo search engines. Windows Live isn't an option. Safari's look and feel closely resembles the Mac version, right down to font rendering; Apple uses its own font smoothing technology rather than tap into Windows ClearType. The silo approach makes sense if Apple's larger goal is providing developers a consistent browser development platform across the iPhone, Mac OS X and Windows.
Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies noted something else. "From Apple's standpoint, they have a significant opportunity to get millions of Windows users even more familiar with various aspects of Apple's Mac user interface," he said. "They already do this now through downloads of iTunes fact that delivers Quicktime as part of that download."
More broadly, Apple needs to provide smooth synchronization among PCs (whether Mac or Windows), .Mac or other Web services and iPhone. Right now, iTunes is Apple's main iPhone synchronization hub. But there is no real extension to .Mac or the browser. Safari for Windows creates another synchronization point for iPhone, alongside Mac Safari.
Barjarin sees possible bundling, as Apple did with iTunes and QuickTime.
"They have over 1 million downloads of iTunes a day now, and it would be easy to add Safari to this download and quickly give more people in the Windows community alternative browser that they can play with and use if they like," he said.
Gartenberg made the same observation: "At the moment, iTunes is one of the most downloaded applications. It will be interesting to see if Apple will leverage that and make Safari a standard part of the iTunes installation at some point. That act alone would immediately give Safari a big boost."
Nudging for Elbow Room
It's clear that Apple needs another browser on Windows, but do the rest of us? First part of the answer lies in what browsers people already use.
According to the counter.com, as of today, IE 6 share is 54 percent; IE 7, 14 percent; Netscape, 13 percent; Firefox, 13 percent; and Safari 3 percent.
By comparison, Net Applications' second quarter share breakdown: 78 percent Internet Explorer (combined); 15 percent Firefox and 5 percent Safari.
W3 Counter gives another view, based on usage through yesterday: IE 6, 50 percent; IE 7, 17 percent; Firefox 2.0, 15 percent; Firefox 1.5, 9 percent; and Safari, 2 percent.
The companies all use different methodologies for measuring browser share, which is the major reason for differences in their percentages. Bottom line: Internet Explorer and Firefox are the dominant browsers, with Safari coming in a distant third. Safari is doing well enough, considering it was, until today, hogtied to the Mac. The boar is loose, and he has horns.
What the market share/usage share percentages don't reveal is real world behavior. Probably lots of people use multiple browsers. Firefox's success is poorly measured strictly by market share. Success is the number of people who now use Internet Explorer and something else, which is likely to be Firefox. Surely, Apple would like that something else to be Safari, too.
Millions of people already use Safari everyday and don't realize, as it's the browsing technology used in iTunes. Apple could really force Safari distribution if iTunes required the full browser. Barjarin and Gartenberg are right to speculate about Safari distribution with iTunes. I'll go further and say forced distribution is an absolutely reasonable prediction.
That said, what Apple wants may not be the same as what most everyone else wants. Firefox has a huge fan base, and look at its share. For that matter, compare Internet Explorer 7 to IE 6, which clearly is an entrenched browser. The bulk of the market is made up of businesses. Based on surveys from my analyst days, nearly all businesses accept Internet Explorer on business PCs and about half allow Firefox. Would they really want the management headache of yet another browser—and one unproven?
Yes, Safari is unproven, because its security record to date no longer counts. Life in Little Town (Mac OS X) doesn't compare to the Ghetto (Windows). I don't mean to malign Windows but to emphasize that it's a rough neighborhood where many criminals try to enter by stealth (malware and phishing) to steal valuables (personal data and accounts).
Advanced browser security features like phishing filters are missing from the Safari beta, and Apple surely isn't talking about adding them or other security features. I don't mean to suggest there is no security, because Apple built in plenty. But Safari for Windows will be subjected to drive-by shootings and other violence not usually seen on the Mac. It's a rough Windows neighborhood, and Apple will have to go a long way convincing many businesses—and consumers, too—that Safari is tough enough.
So in answer to the question, I ask what you think. Do you need another Windows browser? If the answer is "yes," will it be Safari? Our comment lines await your answers.
Related Posts:
- An iPhone Skeptic Speaks Out, Microsoft Watch, June 11, 2007
- An Apple a Day..., Microsoft Watch, June 11, 2007
- Is Internet Explorer Too Locked Down for You?, Microsoft Watch, January 19, 2007
- Where's the 'You' in iPhone, Microsoft Watch, January 10, 2007
- Apple's Son of Newton, Microsoft Watch, January 9, 2007
Comments (14)
I checked this browser out earlier today and was impressed with 1 thing, speed.
The speed is phenominal, the UI is very wonky though if you've grown up in a windows environment and that's not a knock on apple safari; it's just different.
Posted by vic berggren | June 11, 2007 10:19 PM
I think you're missing the point. Apple hasn't just released a browser to the market - they've released the iPhone's browser.
Say you're not sure about getting an iPhone because your previous experience with mobile browsing hasn't been great (badly rendered pages, slow, etc). Now you try Safari. Browsing's fast and you know that the same browser (not a subset of it or a "lite" version) is on the iPhone.
Also, if your in-house team are developing AJAX and Web 2.0 apps for field deployment they can use Safari on either Mac or Windows for testing and development.
I've written a little about this at www.pocketmojo.net. Safari on Windows isn't about winning a browser war - its about the iPhone. Besides, there's no money in a free browser. But the iPhone...
Posted by Anthony Caruana | June 12, 2007 1:49 AM
I think there are two points here.
1. iPhone as you correctly identified.
2. Its beautiful software. Its a gateway drug to buying a mac.
We've all seen an explosion in "influencers" dropping Windows laptops, and the statement from sources like yourselves indicating that the MacBook (and the new Pro) are better, cheaper Vista portables than the incumbents.
IBM for instance, with over 400k employees and contractors worldwide now support Mac & Linux as well as "legacy" windows XP.
MS have lost the tust of the influencers: Basically, we're punishing MS for being three years late, badly implenting Vista, and DRM.
I tried to love Vista for two whole months of agony, reverted back to XP. My next laptop will be a MacBook pro.
---* Bill
Posted by Wild Bill | June 12, 2007 3:05 AM
One more hook out to try and reel in unsatisfied Windows users. Although this is perhaps the wrong approach as the only part of Windows that I'm actually happy about is Firefox! They would have been better off with Mail, iCal or iPhoto - but I completely understand thier position with the iPhone.
Don't write Safari off - iTunes was very slow and buggy and with no decent plug-ins when it launched. Now it is the library manager of choice and has excellent plug-ins such as TheFilter.
Posted by Jonathon Southmead | June 12, 2007 5:26 AM
I think this is very good news. Now all the web developers on Windows will have the opportunity to check their sites for compatibility. And let's not forget that this also (at least to a certain extent) means that they can check their pages' compatibility with Konqueror. So, both Mac OS and Linux users (at least those using KHTML based browsers) will benefit from better compatibility.
Even though the beta is pretty unstable right now, I think that it's an interesting alternative to MSIE.
The iPhone SDK thing (or lack thereof) really sucks, though. If they have a proper OS on the thing, an application that crashes really shouldn't be able to compromise overall system stability. Maybe we'll get one for the second iPhone genetation?
Posted by Peter | June 12, 2007 5:32 AM
I'll second Peter's comment. It'll be nice to finally be able to check for Safari compatibility without the need for additional test machines.
Also, any new browser available to Windows users helps take away some of IE's market share and that's always a plus in my book. I am so very much looking forward to the day I can stop coding quirks and work-arounds for IE-only issues and am finally able to write standards-compliant pages.
Posted by Sakimori | June 12, 2007 8:05 AM
The more the merrier. The more opportunities we have to get away proprietary web rendering the better off everyone is.
Posted by Douglas Glenn | June 12, 2007 10:14 AM
Safari for Windows has absolutely nothing to do with creating a competitor for IE. Safari is the "free" key that opens the door to the iPhone. Applications for the iPhone are based on "free" Web 2.0 standards. Somebody better hide the chairs when Ballmer finally realizes how this will affect Microsoft down the road.
Posted by Ed T | June 12, 2007 10:44 AM
I'm glad it is on windows now because I can test websites for it now. I personally prefer Opera as a web browser. I thought its marketshare was about the same as Safari, but I guess according to the stats you listed, Safari is far ahead. I'll have to try it out.
Phil
Posted by Phil Deets | June 12, 2007 1:19 PM
Yes, as it may eventually turn into something impressive, and with its strong standards compliance, it will FINALLY force the IE team to get with it when it comes to css standards.
Posted by Xepol | June 12, 2007 5:17 PM
"Netscape, 13 percent;"
WTF
Posted by Roger | June 13, 2007 12:39 PM
I'm pretty darned sure that iTunes does _not_ use safari to render the iTunes Music Store content. That content doesn't look or act anything like HTML.
- A
Posted by Asa | June 13, 2007 9:28 PM
Safari on Windows? Here's why. (hint: it's not about the browser)
First, it encourages broader support for Safari among websites. That alone is reason enough, but I think there's more to it; much more. The other reason for Safari on Windows is that it brings with it many of the OSX APIs to Windows.
Why bring OSX APIs to Windows? It's simple. More and more of the most useful applications today are collaborative and social in nature. Think about iChat. Here is one application on OSX that is a nice spin on the idea of instant messaging and will be vastly improved on Leopard. However, to benefit from many of the features in iChat, the other party needs to be running iChat. That's a deal breaker since the majority of users are running Windows. With the OSX APIs available on Windows (perhaps even a full Cocoa environment), porting iChat will be trivial for Apple. Porting any app that has a heavy social or collaborative aspect to it will be trivial (and essential) for Apple.
And then what? Well, Apple could expose that portability layer to third party developers. They could even make it possible for independent software developers to leverage an iTunes like platform for software distribution in much the same way that iTunes is a music distribution platform today. That would be huge for the small software developer that must overcome many barriers to get people to visit their websites and trust them with their credit cards.
http://softwaretechnic.pairhome.net/2007/06/safari-on-windows-heres-why.html
Posted by Stephen | June 16, 2007 1:12 AM
Even back in the 90's their were several browser's. Of course all were based off Internet Explorer. Like the AOL,Netscape,and I am sure their were others.Choice is always good. But why we feel the need to take up hard drive space with several of them is strange. I tried several and always seem to go back to the one that comes with the OS. It updates with the OS,seems to have less sites that don't work. I have little problem with plugins or intergration with media player's.Call me old but if it works why try something else.
I think some people are so bitter about a company like Microsoft that they just use a different browser just because they hate them. I would never make any choice based on my dislike for a company.If the product is good then I don't care.
It's kinda the oposite of say a car manufacture lover.You get those Ford,Chevy or something people and they will say everything else is crap.
I certainly would not want someone telling me that I have to use Firefox anymore then I would want IE to be the only option. I have always felt whatever works for you works.
Posted by John S | November 21, 2007 11:05 AM