The new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser has grown by over 1,300% in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, the Firefox browser is slowly losing its market share.
In January 2020, Microsoft released the first stable version of the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser. They announced that they would slowly release it to Windows 10 users. Unless users created special Windows Registry values, the new Edge would replace Microsoft Edge Legacy after installation.
As the new Microsoft Edge uses the same engine as Google Chrome, the browser quickly grew in popularity as it provides excellent performance, features. Customers can also be able to use all of Chrome’s existing extensions.
Statistics show that Microsoft Edge has grown from a 0.57% market share in March 2020 to 8.03% by March 2021. This is an impressive 1,308% growth in market share in just twelve months.
While we expected that Microsoft Edge’s increased usage would take away from Chrome’s market share, in reality, Chrome’s usage was only chipped away by less than a percentage point over the past year.
On the other hand, Firefox has seen a steady decrease, with it having a 9.25% share in March 2020 and falling to 7.95% by March 2021. This makes it slightly less used than Microsoft Edge.
With Microsoft Edge Legacy being replaced by the new Microsoft Edge, its market share dropped from 4.56% in March 2020 to only 0.44% in March 2021.
Microsoft will be forcibly replacing Microsoft Edge Legacy with the new Microsoft Edge as part of the upcoming April 2021 Patch Tuesday updates, Edge Legacy’s market share will drop even further.
Regardless of which browser you use, the increased Microsoft Edge usage should be seen as a good thing.