Global web user statistics
We stumbled across Global Stats of web user information released by W3 counter, the statistics below were generated on 30th April 2008 based on the last 23,198,062 unique visits to all tracked websites at that time based on a sample of 10,523 websites.
This is a good representation of the internet. You may or may not know that every website you visit can pull up information about you, this includes your IP address, which can be used to find your rough location, your browser information, operating system information, resolution and a some more complex information.
| Web Browsers | ||
| 1 | Internet Explorer 6.0 | 37.52% |
| 2 | Internet Explorer 7.0 | 24.14% |
| 3 | Firefox 2.0 | 23.31% |
| 4 | Firefox 1.5 | 4.19% |
| 5 | Safari 2.0 | 1.21% |
| 6 | Opera 9.2 | 1.14% |
| 7 | Safari 3.0 | 1.10% |
| 8 | Firefox 1.0 | 0.79% |
| 9 | Mozilla 1.8 | 0.58% |
| 10 | Firefox 3.0 | 0.50% |
| Operating Systems | ||
| 1 | Windows XP | 78.56% |
| 2 | Windows Vista | 7.34% |
| 3 | Mac OS X | 4.89% |
| 4 | Windows 2000 | 3.14% |
| 5 | Linux | 1.89% |
| 6 | Windows 98 | 0.99% |
| 7 | Windows 2003 | 0.73% |
| 8 | Windows ME | 0.36% |
| 9 | Windows NT | 0.05% |
| 10 | WAP | 0.03% |
| Countries | ||
| 1 | United States | 28.27% |
| 2 | Germany | 8.09% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 4.73% |
| 4 | Unknown | 3.60% |
| 5 | Canada | 3.13% |
| 6 | France | 3.04% |
| 7 | Netherlands | 3.01% |
| 8 | Latvia | 2.96% |
| 9 | Australia | 2.31% |
| 10 | Turkey | 2.25% |
| Screen Resolution | ||
| 1 | 1024×768 | 46.02% |
| 2 | 1280×1024 | 16.49% |
| 3 | 1280×800 | 12.13% |
| 4 | 800×600 | 6.94% |
| 5 | 1440×900 | 4.47% |
| 6 | 1152×864 | 3.51% |
| 7 | 1680×1050 | 3.15% |
| 8 | 1280×768 | 1.35% |
| 9 | 1280×960 | 1.03% |
| 10 | 1920×1200 | 1.02% |
| Analysis | ||
We found the statistics to be quite interesting, almost half of internet users are still on a 1024×768 resolution monitor implying that they are using a standard square 15″ LCD or CRT monitor. Here at DoesWhat we are all about resolution, we use 2560×1600 on a day to day basis and using 1024×768 really feels like a blast from the past. However, the statistics also show that 12% of users are using a widescreen laptop. It’s worrying to think that almost 7% of us are still using 800×600 displays, modern webdesign rarely caters for this minority, DoesWhat will only display properly on a minimum width of 1024 pixels, those using under this will be forced to use the horizontal scroll bar.
On the operating system front its quite shocking to see that Windows XP is used by over 70% of users. Even with Vista being out for over a year it still only has a 7% share. Next down is Mac OS X, it will be interesting to see how its sub 5% share changes over the coming years. What’s amazing is that Windows 98 an operating system now 10 years old is still more widely used for surfing than all of the Linux Operating Systems put together. I predict this will change with the increase in Linux mobile devices and portable laptops, not to mention large companies like Dell pre-packaging some of their systems with the Ubuntu Linux Distro.
Firefox is vastly increasing in popularity, it has become a household name in a very short time period, the statistics show that it is on a par with Internet Explorer 7, once Internet Explorer 6 eventually dies it then there will be nothing stopping it from becoming the leading web browser.
In short, statistics like these can be a good insight into the speed of technological advancement on a software and hardware front.
