Browser wars: Apple's M1 chips help Safari close the gap on Google Chrome

Browser wars: Apple's M1 fries help Safari close the gap on Google Chrome

(Image credit: Apple)

The success of Apple'southward M1 range of silicon could take inadvertently helped drive up the market place share of web browser Safari, new data suggests.

The starting time M1-powered MacBooks were launched in 2020, followed by a series of mobile workstations powered by the M1 Max and M1 Ultra in October, 2021. Both launches were met with critical acclamation.

All Apple devices, of class, come with Safari pre-installed. And according to the latest figures from Statcounter, the visitor's browser now accounts for 19.half-dozen% of cyberspace activity, upward 1.2% in the last three months alone.

While the increase may audio relatively insignificant as a percentage, the raw numbers are much more compelling; data on the total number of spider web users from Statista suggests Safari has attracted roughly 58 million boosted users since the showtime of October.

A large yr for Safari?

The ubiquity of Apple products (iPhones and iPads, also every bit Mac devices) ways Safari is comfortably the world'southward second largest browser, streets alee of the likes of Microsoft Edge and Firefox.

Yet, Safari is yet nowhere near as widely used equally Google Chrome (with 64% market share), which currently has somewhat of a stranglehold on the sector.

That said, the ever-growing popularity of Apple devices and the company'due south reputation for high levels of security and data privacy could see Safari begin to close the gap on Chrome this yr.

Apple has also been transparent well-nigh its efforts to advance the adoption of business Macs, which may have a knock-on effect on the size of the Safari user base. Last calendar month, Apple announced it is preparing a device subscription offering whereby businesses will be able to lease MacBooks for every bit lilliputian equally $thirty/month.

Although Google executives won't lose whatever slumber over the threat posed by Safari just yet, the browser wars appear set to rage on in 2022.

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Joel Khalili is the News and Features Editor at TechRadar Pro. He's interested in receiving pitches around cybersecurity, data privacy, cloud, AI, blockchain, cyberspace infrastructure, 5G, information storage, concern software and computing.