A very interesting question that is posed to me from time to time.  Logic would say Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.  We’ll if you talk to a lot of my Mac friends, they will tell you that Safari is not their preferred browser.  And the stats back that up.

According to W3Counter (as of June 2010), Internet Explorer 8 holds the lead in the market with 26.17% of the market, followed closely by Firefox 3.6 at 23.11%.

The surprise comes from the next 2 browsers in line.  Showing their very poor system of providing upgrades (as compared to Firefox), the bug ridden Internet Explorer 7 sits at #3 with 11.41% of the market…and the fourth most popular browser is Google Chrome 5 at 9.45% of the market.

Amazingly, for all the hype around Mac’s, Apple’s Safari 4 is the 8th most popular browser at less than 2% of the market.

As for Internet Explorer 6, it still hangs on at #5 with 6.79% of the market.  Hannush Enterprises has finally decided to put IE6 out to pasture as of the end of calendar year 2010.  Meanwhile we will now change our focus from Safari to Google Chrome as a 10% market share makes it a viable player in the market.

This does not mean you should give up completely on Safari.  If your business targets people who use Mac’s or your server stats show a large group of Safari users, you may still want to pay attention to it.  But for the average site, it looks like IE8, Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome should be your main focus.