Battle of Browsers 2016

Monitoring the browsers that hit up our On-Demand service helps us understand how our customers access our product. This is important because it informs which browsers and platforms we support and test.

That was then
In 2014, 63% of total traffic to xMatters On-Demand was from Internet Explorer (and of that total, 85% was attributable to IE8 and IE9). Other web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari represented 29%, 7%, and <1% of the total traffic, respectively.

It’s been a while since our Browser Battle 2014 update, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to look at the current numbers and compare how things have changed between then and now.

This is now
The following tables display the breakdown of traffic to our cloud environment over the past month (June 2016).

Total sessions by browser

Let’s break that down:

• Google Chrome has made a massive leap into first place as the leading web browser, accounting for approximately half (49.27%) of all sessions, which is an increase from 29% in 2014
• Internet Explorer has been bumped into second place with 33% of all browser sessions, down from 63% in 2014
• Firefox and Safari combined remain at <10% of total browser sessions

Internet Explorer sessions by version

Well, that’s interesting:

• 80% of Internet Explorer browser sessions used IE11, compared to a mere 2% in 2014
• IE8 and IE9 now account for less than 20% of Internet Explorer sessions, when in 2014 they stood at a whopping 85%

Remember Netscape?
If you’ve been around the Internet for many years, you know it’s extremely difficult to predict browser dominance. Still, from the trends we see on our own service, we’ll go out on a limb and say that Internet Explorer’s glory days are over. Will something else displace the Chrome juggernaut? Stay tuned for our next Browser Wars update…

Forrester Webinar: More responsive IT

Live Forrester webinar: register today

Join Forrester and xMatters for a live webinar on September 27. Forrester analysts Elinor Klavens and Rob Stroud and xMatters CTO Abbas Haider Ali will engage in a lively discussion around leveraging integration and automation for rapid incident response and proactive service management. Register today

Request a demo