Safari is about to lose its place as the world’s 2nd-most-used desktop web browser

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

Safari remains the second most-used desktop web browser in the world as of January 2022, but two of its competitors are close to taking over second place this time around.

While Safari is used by 9.84% of desktop users, Microsoft Edge is right behind with 9.54% market share. Firefox, which had only 8.1% share in January 2021, has gained new users during the past few months and now has 9.18% of the desktop market share. Unsurprisingly, Google Chrome is still in first place with 65.38% of the share.

And:

While StatCounter or even Apple doesn’t provide details on the reason why Safari is losing users, we can easily make a few assumptions about it. Safari is the default web browser for Apple devices such as the iPhone and the Mac, which certainly contributes to it being the second most used web browser worldwide.

Last year, Apple introduced a completely redesigned version of Safari that unified the address bar with the tab bar. However, the update left some users unhappy, which made Apple revert Safari back to its old design and make the new interface optional for users. This, of course, wasn’t enough to stop many users from switching to other web browsers.

Not sure how big a deal this is. If you look at the StatCounter chart embedded in the 9to5Mac post, the lines are pretty flat. Chrome absolutely dominates, and the rest of the players, including Safari, sit way down in the mix. If I did not read the article and just looked at the chart, I’d say any movement is negligible, in the noise.

Personally, I trust Safari more than other web browsers, both with privacy and with behaving properly in the macOS ecosystem (just search for “chrome Mac battery drain” for one example). Safari is not perfect, obviously, but it works really well for me.