Microsoft's Edge keeps shedding share as users pick other browsers on Windows 10

[steven36]

Trio of metrics providers all report that Edge's percentage of Windows 10 users has declined monthly

 

Microsofts Edge browser, the replacement for Internet Explorer on Windows 10, continues to struggle to retain users, according to multiple metrics sources.

Since Edge debuted in late July, Microsoft''s latest browser has shed share each month.

 

Data from three sources showed the decline both globally and in the U.S.; in the latter, the browser -- and Windows 10 -- have attracted a larger percentage of users than overseas' markets. The numbers for each source differ -- largely because of their varying methodologies -- but all illustrate the same downward trend.

 

(Because Edge works only on Windows 10, it's relatively easy to calculate the percentage of Windows 10 users who run the browser. That's not the case with other browsers, including Internet Explorer (IE), Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, which run on other editions of Windows as well as on rival operating systems, such as Apple's OS X and Linux.)

 

U.S.-based Net Applications, which measures global user share by tallying unique visitors to its clients' websites, pegged Edge's share of Windows 10 as 39% in August, then declining each of the next three months, ending at 31.2% in November.

 

Meanwhile, Irish analytics company StatCounter tagged Edge's worldwide share of Windows 10 at much lower to start -- 15.2% for August -- but like Net Applications' numbers, its figures also showed a steady erosion. For the three months following August, StatCounter's data put Edge at 13.9%, 13.3%, and for November, 12.9%.

StatCounter tracks usage share by counting page views for the websites that use its analytics package, making its measurements a proxy for browsing activity, not the fraction of users running a specific browser.

 

A third source, the Digital Analytics Program (DAP), also portrayed the same downward trend of Edge as a fraction of Windows 10. DAP collects and collates visits to more than 4,000 websites on over 400 different domains maintained by U.S. government agencies, including the National Weather Service, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the Social Security Administration. (Visits are essentially a tweener metric, halfway between visitors and page views in the analytics world: One person visiting a site over two days, for example, who looked at four pages each day, would generate one unique visitor under Net Applications' methodology, two visits for DAP, and eight page views for StatCounter.)

 

The bulk of DAP's visits come from U.S. residents, although some agencies -- USCIS is one example -- record significant traffic from people who live elsewhere. And unlike Net Applications' and StatCounter's numbers stated above, DAP's includes a mix of both desktop and mobile devices. In the last 90 days, for instance, about a third of its visits originated from smartphones and tablets.

Edge-powered visits to DAP's sites accounted for 24.6% of those running Windows 10 in September, the oldest month for which Computerworld has data. But Edge's percentage slipped each of the next two months, to 23.2% in October and again, to 22.4%, in November.

 

StatCounter also offers data for the U.S.-only; those numbers were nearer DAP's than StatCounter's global measurements, but still lower than the project's. In the September-November span, StatCounter tapped Edge's share of Windows 10 at 18.1% in September and 17.7% in November.

 

While each of the three sources posted different share figures, the rate of decline from September to November -- the period for which Computerworld had data from the trio -- was closer. According to Net Applications, Edge user share contracted by 14% during that stretch; StatCounter and DAP booked fall-offs of 7% and 9%, respectively.

 

The lackluster adoption of Edge by Windows 10 users continues to surprise: Not only is Edge the default browser for Windows 10, but it has also been heavily promoted by Microsoft, which will swap in Edge for rival browsers during an upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 unless the user intervenes.

 

Speculation about Edge's low uptake has focused on its unfinished status, especially its omission of support for add-ons. Earlier this year, Microsoft promised to provide that support in 2015. But in October, the Redmond, Wash. company confirmed that add-ons -- also called "extensions" -- won't appear until some time next year.

 

Source

[vibranium]

They shouldn't have rolled out Edge in this unfinished state. I think some users want to stay on earlier versions of Windows, just because of Edge.

[Sylence]

The truth is that Edge is faster than Chrome and Firefox

[mirassol]

2 hours ago, saeed_dc said:

The truth is that Edge is faster than Chrome and Firefox

I doubt it.

[Bigmedion]

2 hours ago, saeed_dc said:

The truth is that Edge is faster than Chrome and Firefox

 

Absolutely normal, Edge offers no extension !!

 

Exxtensions decrease performance of Web Browsers

[Sylence]

16 minutes ago, mirassol said:

I doubt it.

 

4 minutes ago, Bigmedion said:

 

Absolutely normal, Edge offers no extension !!

 

Exxtensions decrease performance of Web Browsers

 

Yes exactly, but my laptop has decent hardware and I use Ublock origins in Chrome and typically it must decrease page's load time.

 

[Batu69]

"Windows 10 users running Edge dropped monthly"

 

Microsoft’s Edge browser is a major new component of Windows 10 and represents the company’s attempt to break from the past and introduce a new, more standards-compliant browser to replace the aging Internet Explorer. Getting people to commit to Edge is an intense focus for Microsoft right about now, and according to Computerworld, this focus is getting a bit blurry.

 

Three different reporting agencies show Edge declining in market share vs. its competition among users running Windows 10. Net Applications bases their measurements on assessing who visits their client sites in the U.S., StatCounter measures worldwide browser share based on pages tracked by its global analytics solution. And Digital Analytics Program (DAP) looked at U.S. government agencies to assess the share of Windows 10 users running Edge.

 

• Net Applications: the share of Windows 10 users running Edge dropped monthly from 39% in August to 31.2% in November
• StatCounter: worldwide Windows 10 share was only 15.2% for Edge in August, 2015, dropping to 12.9% in November, 2015.
• DAP: In September, 2015, Edge was running on 24.6% of Windows 10 users, and by November, 2015, that number had dropped to 22.4%.

 

Those are ominous numbers. Edge is a Windows 10 exclusive, and it’s the default browser on Microsoft’s newest and most important operating system. Running Edge on the desktop is important to Windows 10 Mobile, as well, since settings and passwords sync across platforms.

 

 

Computerworld provides some more in-depth analysis, but the trend is clear whether you’re looking at worldwide numbers or only U.S. users: Microsoft Edge is on the wrong sort of trajectory if growing market share is the objective. Microsoft is making continuous improvements to their newest browser, and should introduce the much-requested extension support at some point in the future.

 

For now, though, it looks like Microsoft has its work cut out for it.

 

News source

[oliverjia]

Only morons choose to hide all the options (even the home page button and address bar!) that will make users' lives easier. Whoever wrote Edge happen to be such kind of morons. 

[coromonadalix]

Edge is a sh@$#$  not even useful, tried  but cant stand how it works, serioulsy retarded in functionality,  just buy a company and let them show you how its done m$oft

[anuraag]

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