The latest web trends must be at the finger tips of the web developers. Otherwise how would they remain at par with other equally sharp minds which are vying for a share in the internet pie? The only way to be sure that their finger is on the right button, they have to rely on the available market statistics regarding the common browsers, their display resolutions and the most common operating systems which are in use the world over.

But before we jump into muddy cesspool of statistical data, here is a word of caution. It is said that lies are of three types: lies, white lies and statistics! I am in no way insinuating that statisticians are liars. What they provide in the form of tables and charts of data collected from reasonably reliable sources are all true and factually correct. What is debatable is the interpretation of that data.

Can you recall an infamous incident which took place in late sixties? Faced with mounting pressure from the anti-tobacco lobby for a complete ban on cigarettes and other tobacco products because of the harmful effects of tobacco and alarmingly large proportions of adolescents getting addicted to it, the extremely powerful multi billion dollars tobacco cartel hired the services of world famous statistician Fisher to statistically prove that tobacco consumption and cancer are not correlated.

Fisher proved it! Nobody could challenge Fisher’s impeccable credentials and find fault with his findings but everybody knew the trick lay in skillfully selecting the samples from an equally skillfully arranged universe. So, the technique and the results could not be academically challenged, but truth got a short shrift.

Actually what happens in reality is any occurrence or an incident is the result of an extremely complex combination of interactive and interdependent forces. So, unless all the forces are thoroughly analyzed and their influence on the final outcome properly calibrated, it would be impossible to pinpoint any particular reason as the main cause of a particular outcome. Economists overcome this problem through the use of ceteris paribus condition which hardly can be replicated in real life market conditions.

I hope we have spent enough space to send the message across that statistics should be understood in proper perspective and not accepted as Bible truth.

Let us now inspect the latest trends one after the other.

Browsers

The browsers which have been in wide use during the five year period of 2002-2007 are Internet Explorer, Firefox (known as Mozilla before 2004) and Netscape.

If we view the statistics from 2002 onwards we find that various versions of Internet Explorer, i.e., IE5 and IE6 together accounted for approximately 83% of the market while Netscape accounted for 8% of the pie. AOL had a share of approximately 5% and the rest 4% was shared by other small players such as Opera and Safari.

The next year, 2003, did not see much of a change in the market breakup.

However, the year 2004 saw a marked increase in market penetration by Firefox (then known as Mozilla). Its share jumped to 17% while IE slipped to 76%. Netscape and some other minor players made up the balance 7%.

The year 2005 saw a continuation of this trend with Firefox sneaking up to gobble up 27% of the market share while IE slipped further down to 69%. Other fringe players such as Netscape and Opera accounted for the rest of the market.

The year 2006 saw a further encroachment by Firefox in the territory which had been the practical monopoly of Internet Explorer. Firefox had by now become a major threat to IE and had grabbed 34% of the market with IE being forced to be content with only 59% of the market share. The balance of the market, as had been the trend in the past four years, remained with the fringe players such as Netscape and Opera.

This year, i.e., 2007 has not seen any changes in the trend. Till July, 2007, Firefox is in control of 36% of the net space while IE is still reining supreme in about 59% of the pie. Safari and Opera remain the usual props in the show by operating in the balance 5% space.

Operating Systems

Operating systems are the heart of computers and any web developer must have a very clear idea as to what are the operating systems which are functioning at the heart of the personal computers which dot almost every household across the world.

As we did in case of Browsers, we will start our analysis from 2003 and carry it right up to the month of July, 2007.

The whole universe knows that Windows are the unquestionable emperors in this domain. So, we will view the individual members of the windows family instead of clubbing them under one umbrella because that would not be much of significance.

In 2003 Mac had an insignificant market share of 2.2% and Linux was more or less on the same boat with 2.6%. The rest of the market was firmly in the grip of Windows.

Win95 which was already eight years old had firmly been pushed in the backburners of history and WinNT was also on its way out following its older sibling Win95. Together they controlled only about 4% of the market share. But Win98 was still a force to reckon with about 11% of the market in its control. But the real honors were shared by Win2000 with a 36% market share and WinXP, the newest offering on the block, cornering an impressive 43%.

The year 2004 saw the almost fading out of Win95 and WinNT with both of them together failing to hold even 2% of the market. The aggressive marketing by the Microsoft saw a steady upgradation by the majority users. Moreover the new PCs which came to the market all had the newer versions of operating systems and Win95 and WinNT remained with those who were not yet ready to upgrade. Win98 also saw its market share get reduced by half. All the shrinkage of these operating systems was merrily lapped up by WinXP. It jumped almost 18% to flirt the 60% mark while even Win2000 registered a considerable downfall of 13%.

The next year, 2005 saw the same trend. Win95 faded out of the market altogether, and Win98 saw a further reduction of its market share by another half. Win2000 also saw another reduction in its share by 50% of what it was in the previous year while the flagship product of Microsoft. WinXP breached the 70% barrier.

The year 2006 saw the exit of Win98 from the market. It barely held on to 1% of the market while Win2000 now barely had 8% of the market share. The well orchestrated strategy of Microsoft bore fruit with more than 75% of all the PCs in the world using WinXP operating system.

Till July this year, i.e., 2007, the same trend has continued. WinXP is the unquestioned leader in this field with three quarters of the PCs of the world running on it while the latest and most flamboyant product from the stable of the Microsoft, Vista already capturing 4% of the market within a few months of its arrival.

However, an important point to observe is that while Linux and Mac are still very much in the periphery, they have made modest gains in the sense that from a pitiable situation of hardly 4% in 2002 they have now achieved a more respectable level of 8%. Though the impact on the market has been negligible the progress has been steady.

Display Resolution

In the year 2002, almost half of all the PCs in use had a screen size of 800X600 pixels. The rest half comprised of professionals among whom about 40% used screen size of 1024X768 and a miniscule of 6% used screens of higher pixels.

This trend more or less continued through the year 2003 also with only about 5% increase in the number of users of screen sizes of 1024X768 pixels while the number of those using higher sized screens remained almost constant with barely a 1% increase.

During this period the color depths of screens were roughly divided in two halves. About 50% of the computers could display 16,777,216 different colors (using 24 or 32 bits hardware) and 45% of the computers could display 65,536 different colors (using 16 bits hardware – most laptops still use this type of hardware).

Since 2004, the PC world witnessed a slow but steady increase in the use screen sizes 1024X768 pixels and it has reached a high point of 54% at the beginning of the current year, i.e., 2007. What is more significant is that number of people having higher screen resolutions has increased significantly. From a meager 6% in 2002 it has reached a respectable level of 26% in the beginning of 2007.

Coupled with this another interesting bit of information is that, almost 85% of the PC users are now using screens which are capable of displaying 16,777,216 different colors.

So, the web developers can now reach a very high percentage of their audience with flying colors and create an even better impression!

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