Report: Safari Now Has Over 1 Billion Users

According to a survey by Atlas VPN, Apple Safari now has over one billion users across desktop and mobile. It’s only the second web browser to pass that usage milestone.

“According to the findings by the Atlas VPN team, 1,006,232,879 Internet users (19.16 percent of all Internet users) now use the Safari browser, making it the second browser with over a billion users,” an Atlas security researcher identified only as William S. writes in the announcement post. “Nevertheless, Google Chrome firmly remains at the top as the most popular browser.”

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

It sure does: almost 3.4 billion people use Google Chrome worldwide, according to Atlas, giving that browser almost 65 percent usage share. Rounding out the top five, Microsoft Edge is in third place with 213 million users, Mozilla Firefox is fourth with 179 million users, and Samsung Internet (which is available only on mobile) is fifth with 150 million users.

Atlas arrived at its usage numbers by taking the latest StatCounter’s browser usage share percentages and converting them into numbers using the Internet World Stats Internet user metric.

Of course, the big change in the past year is that Edge usage has surpassed that of Firefox. Atlas credits Microsoft’s dirty tactics for this success.

“Since the release of Windows 11, Microsoft set it as the default browser on all devices and made it difficult for users to change to their preferred option,” William S. notes. “Therefore, Edge received a significant increase in its userbase.”

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 15 comments

  • Donte

    01 June, 2022 - 10:12 am

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It sure does: 3.4 million people use Google Chrome worldwide"</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Billion?</span></p>

  • digiguy

    Premium Member
    01 June, 2022 - 10:33 am

    <p>My guess is that most of that billion comes from iPhones… And some of those 3.4 billions for Chrome also come from Android, including Samsung phones. But Chrome is king on desktop anyway</p>

    • jdawgnoonan

      01 June, 2022 - 11:45 am

      <p>I would assume that the majority of Chrome users are on Android as there are far more Android phones than there are Desktop PCs. I believe that the number of active iPhones is pretty close to the same as the number of active PCs. </p>

    • jdawgnoonan

      01 June, 2022 - 11:49 am

      <p>Windows actually falls somewhere between iOS and Android marketshare: </p><p>https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share</p&gt;

    • rob_segal

      Premium Member
      01 June, 2022 - 12:47 pm

      <p>An interesting number would be the number of iPhone users who use Safari on their phones, but another browser (Edge, Chrome, Firefox) on their PC. The benefits of using Safari on iPhones and Macs are obvious, but the browser choice of iPhone users on Windows is interesting.</p>

      • Ivan X

        01 June, 2022 - 6:22 pm

        <p>Anecdata here, but I’m a Mac consultant to individuals, and while, as you might expect, nearly every single client uses Safari on iPhone and iPad, quite a lot of my clients instead use Chrome or Firefox on their Macs.</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        02 June, 2022 - 6:26 am

        <p>I use Brave on Android (I used to use Firefox, but it caused too many problems for a while).</p><p><br></p><p>I use Firefox on Windows, with Brave as a secondary.</p><p><br></p><p>I use Firefox on Linux and RaspiOS.</p><p><br></p><p>I use Safari on iOS and iPadOS.</p><p><br></p><p>And I use Safari with Firefox as a backup on macOS.</p>

        • wright_is

          Premium Member
          02 June, 2022 - 6:28 am

          <p>Oh, I forgot, on Windows, I also use Edge exclusively for managing our Microsoft 365 portal.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    01 June, 2022 - 1:56 pm

    <p>Total all those numbers comes close to 5 billion. Seems to me that there’s a lot of overlap, that is, some particular individuals (probably hundreds of millions, if not billions, of ’em) using Safari along with Chrome and likely some other browser too.</p><p><br></p><p>As for Edge users, I have the Linux version on my machine, and I use it for SSBs for OneDrive and web versions of Office programs. I suppose that makes me an Edge users even though I don’t use it for browsing.</p><p><br></p><p>FWLIW, I’m tending to use Web more frequently. It’s a Linux web browser which uses WebKit. There are 2 sites I frequent (one The Economist) which Firefox no longer handles well. I’m dreading the death of Firefox. I figure it has no chance of surviving this decade.</p>

    • rob_segal

      Premium Member
      01 June, 2022 - 2:58 pm

      <p>The overlap you see could be explained simply by thinking about smartphones, tablets, and computers. A family of four could easily account for 10 to 12 internet users by counting each device the family owns. I’m actually surprised the total number on this chart isn’t higher. There are about seven and a half billion smartphone users in the world. Then add about 2 million computer users. I’m not even accounting for tablets right now. The 5 billion number now seems small. If that number is correct, what I see is a lot of people on mobile don’t use a browser. They just use apps, which hurts the case for prioritizing web apps when you’re targeting mobile users as well as traditional computer form factors.</p>

      • rob_segal

        Premium Member
        01 June, 2022 - 2:59 pm

        <p>I meant to say 2 billion computer users. That’s probably too high, but it’s a round number that accounts for every Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, and Linux machine and VM.</p>

      • rob_segal

        Premium Member
        01 June, 2022 - 3:06 pm

        <p>To further my point, there are over 2.5 billion Android users in the world. Safari isn’t on Android and the number of Edge users on Android isn’t large. That would mean there are only about 800 million Chrome users spread across Windows, Mac, Chromebooks, and other computers. That seems a little low. On Windows, I expect that number to be about a billion.</p>

        • hrlngrv

          Premium Member
          01 June, 2022 - 8:03 pm

          <p>Tangent: how many Mac users use Chrome on their Macs?</p><p><br></p><p>If there are 1.5 billion <em>devices</em> running all versions of Windows, there are maybe 1.8 billion microcomputers in total. I figure iPads and Android tablets add another 600 million devices, so 2.4 billion non-phones. Which would leave 2.6 billion phones. (Note: some of your 2.5 billion Android users would be Android TABLET users.) 3 or so humans per phone? Maybe.</p>

  • retcable

    Premium Member
    02 June, 2022 - 6:51 am

    <p>This makes me feel really special as I am one of those people who do not use Chrome as my web browser of choice. I am mainly a Firefox user although I do use Safari as a secondary browser, and Brave and Vivaldi on occasion. Those latter two use Chromium I believe as their base engines but at least they are not Chrome. I just refuse to risk my identity and privacy through the use of Chrome. </p>

  • infloop

    Premium Member
    03 June, 2022 - 12:31 am

    <p>I used to use Edge primarily, but I’ve gone back to using Firefox as my primary browser on Windows, Linux, macOS, and iOS. Firefox works just fine for me on the desktop operating systems, and I use a mix of Firefox and Firefox Focus on iOS (I am aware that the engine on iOS is basically Safari though). I now only use Edge for Microsoft services.</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC