In February 2019, Microsoft published a recommendation to stop using IE. We used Applixure’s anonymous usage data to survey the use of different Internet browsers on workstations. The sample covered over 50,000 workstations that Applixure monitors. The workstation data was gathered from approximately two hundred organisations of all sizes and operating in a variety of fields.
Internet Explorer is used against recommendations
The data revealed that all Windows workstations had Internet Explorer installed, as can be expected. Out of the workstations that had Internet Explorer installed, the browser had been used on 64%.
Looking at whole organisations, Internet Explorer had been used in the past month in as many as 88%. In other words, only one in ten organisations that have Internet Explorer installed on its workstations have managed to rid of its use completely according to the recommendation.
Comparisons on the use of different browsers on workstations also reveal that using Internet Explorer is clearly more common than opting for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox that totals less than 20% of the use. Microsoft Edge, which became available with Windows 10, is also used in nearly all organisations. In the overall sample, it had only been installed on barely over a half of the workstations, however. As a conclusion, relatively many are still using earlier Windows versions that do not ship with Edge.
Another interesting takeaway is that while other browsers (such as Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and Tor) have been installed in nearly a half (48%) of the organisations, these installations are only found on a few per cent of the overall number of computers. This tells us that the more exotic browser installations are on few, isolated computers. Their active use on the computers is very marginal, close to 0%.
As regards our analysis, it is good to note that our data is purely based on use data measured on computers, while most other statistics published are typically drawn from the server end. The latter therefore covers traffic through all terminal device types, including mobile devices.
Browsers on Windows workstations
Chrome and Safari are dominant on Mac computers
On macOS workstations, Apple Safari and Google Chrome are clearly the most widely used browsers in the corporate world. Even though Safari comes automatically installed with the operating system, Google Chrome had been installed on 95% of the MacOS workstations and does not fall far behind the use numbers for Safari.
In fact, Chrome even reaches higher use numbers when examined at the workstation level: in the past month, Safari had been used on 53 per cent of the workstations on which it was installed, while Chrome had been used on 72 per cent of the workstations on which it was installed. The use of Mozilla Firefox on MacOS computers, in turn, is at a very low level compared to Windows computers.
Among the surveyed workstations, the sample of MacOS computers was relatively small. Based on our perception, this is due to the fact that in larger organisations the use of Mac computers is quite rare.
Browsers on macOS workstations
