The Quickr Blog

We have been making the most of the holiday down-time to bring across the last of the posts that had been left on the old Nucleus-based Quickr Blog, having transitioned over to this Domino-based blog in May 2008 - my thanks to Greg who has been doing all the hard work.  This means that we now have a full set of archives here that take us back to The Quickr Blog's launch on 4th February, 2007, just a week after Lotus Quickr was announced at Lotusphere2007.

So, what has changed in the course of those 475 posts and nearly 2 years?

Well, one of the posts that was copied across this week is from May 2007, and discusses the share of browsers and platforms that were accessing the Quickr blog at that time.  On copying over the post, Greg asked:

Surprising considering the domination of IE in the USA domestic environment, but maybe this is not the case in the workplace. Also of interest is the Mac vs Linux figures - very similar. It would be interesting to update these figures.

So here we go - I have used June 2007 vs December 2008 stats as both sets are in Google Analytics so the reporting mechanism is consistent:

Browsers:

Browser	June 2007 Share	December 2008 Share	Change
Internet Explorer	51.73%	29.44%	- 22.29%
Firefox	44.88%	59.43%	+ 14.55%
Safari	1.39%	3.02%	+ 1.63%
Opera	1.29%	0.70%	- 0.59%
Mozilla	0.43%	0.51%	+ 0.08%
Chrome	n/a	4.61%	+ 4.61%

So, no doubt the trend there - use of IE is falling very quickly indeed (and about time too!), with Firefox (and its derivatives such as Flock) having risen steadily over this period.  Safari has also more than doubled its share (partially through iPhone/iPod Touch use), though is still only a lowly 3%.  The big mover of recent months has been another WebKit browser, Google Chrome, which has come from nowhere (it was released on 2 September 2008) to nearly 5% - astonishing growth, particularly for a Windows-only browser.

Browser Platforms:

Platform	June 2007 Share	December 2008 Share	Change
Windows	93.25%	85.91%	- 7.34%
Macintosh	3.36%	9.63%	+ 6.27%
Linux	2.81%	3.28%	+ 0.47%
Not Set	0.58%	0.06%	- 0.52%
iPhone/iPod	n/a	0.95%	+ 0.95%
Symbian	n/a	0.10%	+ 0.10%

Windows usage is definitely falling then, at least for the technically-biased population that visit the Quickr Blog, with Mac usage growing by a similar amount - though not hitting the magical 10% just yet.  Linux has grown a little too, which is good to see - in the 18 months between samples Ubuntu has been released and is now widely adopted - could this be one of the major factors?  However, the clear growth area is mobile devices - iPhone/Ipod + Symbian + Android + Blackberry devices account for almost 1% of all visits now and is increasing daily - it will be interesting to watch this trend over the next few months.

Taking the two sets of stats together, the biggest shift has been IE/Windows to Firefox/Windows and Chrome/Windows (44.8%/44.67%/0% in June 2007 to 29.44%/49.41%/4.61% in December 2008).  Perhaps all the security scares around Internet Explorer are finally having an impact on those slow-to-react corporate IT departments and those PC vendors that supply to the Walmarts/BestBuys of this world? Let's hope so!