Chrome did pretty well in April, according to the latest stats from Net Applications, increasing its market share by 0.60 percent.  And now, to perhaps speed the browser’s adoption even more, Google’s unveiled what it promises is the fastest beta version of Chrome to date.

"Today’s new beta release incorporates one of Chrome’s most significant speed and performance increases to date, with 30% and 35% improvement on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over the previous beta channel release," a post on the Google Chrome Blog boasted.

The new beta includes some fresh features, too, like the option to sync browser preferences, plus Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop capabilities.

It seems possible that the people behind other browsers will have to go back to the drawing board – or just weep – as a result.  IE already lost 0.70 percent of market share between March and April, according to Net Applications.  Opera slipped a little, too.  And Firefox, Safari, and Opera Mini gained a bit of market share, but not as much as they did between February and March.

Finally, for your viewing enjoyment, here’s a video involving potato guns, paint, a pirate ship, and a mock lightning strike that relates to the new beta’s speed.

The news broke yesterday about the Microsoft General Manager who said that that the “future of the Web is HTML 5.”

But it’s important enough for us to write about even if in the long run it still does not solve the issues with earlier versions of the Internet Explorer browser.

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The news came from Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager, for Internet Explore. Of note:

“Today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based. While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.”

It’s this kind of development that will give more developers the confidence to build HTML 5 apps. But does it really matter that much? IE has been hands off in how it deals with support for HTML 5 on its existing browsers. Further, full support for HTML 5 is nonexistent across Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox and IE. We have no release schedule for IE 9 but it will support HTML 5.

HTML 5 is very cool. But IE’s market share is not to be taken lightly.

From Psyked:

“You can’t ignore 40-60% of your users because they use a browser that isn’t up to the same standard as its competitors. I’d dearly like too, but I can’t. Which means everything has to be developed without HTML5 & CSS 3, either using browser targeting and using multiple styles and coding options, or developed to the lowest common denominator – IE.

You might say that things will eventually catch up – but considering IE6 is still at 10% market share, you’re always going to be developing something for IE6, or IE7, or IE8. None of which have very much HTML5 support at all. IE9 isn’t going to be available for users on Windows XP, which means the best they’ll ever get is IE8, which means… argh, this really isn’t going to work.”

Microsoft’s acknowledgement should be viewed as a positive one for developers. HTML 5 can be used universally on any device. Google thinks that’s important. It’s good to see Microsoft showing that sentiment, too.

But still, let’s not give this too much credence, either. Microsoft’s first allegiance is to Silverlight. That’s not going to change.

We referenced a Forrester viewpoint post last week that illustrates the reality of the situation:

“Will HTML 5 make rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete? For at least the next five years, the answer is a definite “no”; inconsistent implementations of the draft HTML 5 specification and immature tooling make building HTML 5 apps that work consistently across browsers and operating systems a real challenge. Furthermore, this “either/ or” scenario is driven only by vendor politics, not by developer realities. Ultimately, HTML 5 and RIA platforms will be complementary technologies, and enterprise development shops will need to invest in both approaches to deliver expressive applications that combine reach and richness.”

Well, vendor politics will always be rich in themselves. In the meantime, HTML 5 sure is sexy. Unfortunately, it may be a while before we see how beautiful it really is.

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Google scored a big win today, and by all accounts, the state of Oregon made out well, too.  This is because the Oregon school system will begin using Google Apps for Education, saving it a boatload of cash while allowing Google to increase its market share.

In fact, Oregon is the first state to agree to make Google Apps available to all of its public schools, meaning this is a significant breakthrough for Google.  And if all goes well, it could represent the start of a trend, since other states would want to reap the same benefits as Oregon.

As for the exact nature of those benefits, the Oregon Department of Education will supposedly save $1.5 million per year by switching to Google Apps.  And there are some other consequences that won’t show up on any balance sheet.

Jaime Casap, a Google Apps Education manager, wrote on the Official Google Blog, "With Google Apps, students in Oregon can build websites or email teachers about a project. . . .  And instead of just grading a paper at the end of the process, Oregonian teachers can help students with their docs in real time, coaching them along the way. It’s critical that students learn how to use the kind of productivity technology they’ll need throughout their lives, and Oregon is helping students across the state do just that."

Oregon and Google are moving fast, too, considering a "Request an Oregon Google Apps account now!" link is already live on the Oregon Virtual School District site.

Google scored a big win today, and by all accounts, the state of Oregon made out well, too.  This is because the Oregon school system will begin using Google Apps for Education, saving it a boatload of cash while allowing Google to increase its market share.

In fact, Oregon is the first state to agree to make Google Apps available to all of its public schools, meaning this is a significant breakthrough for Google.  And if all goes well, it could represent the start of a trend, since other states would want to reap the same benefits as Oregon.

As for the exact nature of those benefits, the Oregon Department of Education will supposedly save $1.5 million per year by switching to Google Apps.  And there are some other consequences that won’t show up on any balance sheet.

Jaime Casap, a Google Apps Education manager, wrote on the Official Google Blog, "With Google Apps, students in Oregon can build websites or email teachers about a project. . . .  And instead of just grading a paper at the end of the process, Oregonian teachers can help students with their docs in real time, coaching them along the way. It’s critical that students learn how to use the kind of productivity technology they’ll need throughout their lives, and Oregon is helping students across the state do just that."

Oregon and Google are moving fast, too, considering a "Request an Oregon Google Apps account now!" link is already live on the Oregon Virtual School District site.

Opera announced today that its browsers are now used by more than 100 million people worldwide, saying that the distribution between mobile and desktop users is a nearly even split at 50 million a piece.

While 50 million desktop users means just a tiny fraction of the browser market for home users, 50 million mobile users actually represents a dominance in the mobile browser market.

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According to the latest numbers by StatCounter, Opera for the desktop comes in fifth (essentially last) place, behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Opera accounts for just under 2% of the browser market, while IE holds 53% of the market share, and Firefox comes in around 32%. Safari, Opera’s nearest competitor (and default Mac browser) accounts for twice as many users as Opera.

Looking at the mobile browser numbers, on the other hand, we see Opera Mini with 28% and iPhone’s native browser following with just under 20%. And all of that could change, of course, if Apple would just accept Opera Mini into the AppStore. Opera submitted its mobile browser just under three weeks ago at the time of this writing, but has a policy that prevents other browsers from operating on the iPhone.

While the numbers seem to say that Opera just isn’t cutting it on the desktop, Opera Mini has been holding the lead as far as mobile browsing goes and we’d sure love to see it on the iPhone sometime in the near future.

Discuss

March was an interesting month for the search market, according to new statistics from comScore.  Not so interesting that Google isn’t still on top by a huge margin, of course, but interesting insofar as the search giant lost a bit of market share, even as Bing and Yahoo improved their standing.

Let’s start with Google’s story.  In February, comScore puts its market share at 65.5 percent.  That declined to 65.1 percent in March, which is a moderately unusual turn of events.

As for how Bing did, it’s still Microsoft’s little search-engine-that-could, achieving its tenth straight month of gains.  Not huge gains, perhaps – its market share just moved from 11.5 percent to 11.7 percent between February and March – but the streak remains impressive, and even the tiniest numbers add up over time.

Then there’s Yahoo’s tale to consider.  Unfortunately for Carol Bartz, the company’s standing had dropped each of the previous 13 months.  However, moving from February to March, comScore recorded a 0.1 percent gain, nudging Yahoo from 16.8 percent to 16.9 percent.

So it was definitely an interesting month, as these things go.  And Bing and Yahoo, at least, are no doubt hoping April turns out to be just as unusual.

Thanks to the hard work of any number of individuals (along with Google’s willingness to trust them), certain areas of Google Maps will now be a lot more detailed.  An impressive 17 countries and territories have been deemed set to graduate from Google Map Maker to Google Maps.

Although you may not hear about it often, Google Map Maker serves an important function by allowing people to manually add details about roads, towns, and other things when traditional mapping data is unavailable.  It was introduced towards the end of 2008.

Damascus, Syria Before And After

The program’s really caught on, too, considering that this update brings the total of graduated regions to an even 160.

Anyway, this time around, the updated info relates to Brunei, Colombia, Cuba, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Kiribati, Kuwait, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Syria, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Yemen.

Google may enjoy a boost in market share in these regions as a result, or at the least, there’s a distinct possibility that a few less American visitors will find themselves getting lost.

According to recent statistics from AndroidLib.com, the Android Marketplace saw 9,331 new mobile applications added to its app store during the month of March, 2010. This number is even more phenomenal when you look at the Android Marketplace’s historical growth. In December of last year, for example, there were 3,807 new applications added to the Android app store. By January, 4,458 more were added. In February, 5,532 arrived. And now, 9,331. If this trend continues, we could possibly see a month this year where the number of new applications tops 5 digits. And with numbers like this, Android could soon give Apple a run for its money.

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Since the launch of the Google Android Market in October 2008, the developer ecosystem surrounding the OS has seen rapid growth. One week after the Market’s launch, there were just 167 applications available for download. That may seem like a lot, but when you positioned it against Apple’s App Store – now with over 160,000 applications – it was clear that Android had a long climb ahead.

But climb it did. By September 2009, the Android Market passed 10,000 applications. By February of this year, Android Market share doubled again, positioning the Google Mobile OS to overtake Palm and the Market size grew again to include 19,897 applications. Today, the number of Android applications has reached 27,243 and there’s no sign of its growth slowing down.

Although Apple still has far more mobile applications available for download, relative to the number of apps housed, Android is actually one of the fastest-growing mobile application stores on the market today. According to mobile analytics company Distimo, Android hasn’t quite reached 30,000 yet, but in a statement last month from a Google representative, the company claimed there were “approximately 30,000 free and paid apps.” Maybe they were just rounding up?

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An investment firm that was founded in 1895 and earned almost $470 million in net revenue last year thinks it’s likely that Apple will build its own search engine.  Specifically, Piper Jaffray assigned this outcome a 70 percent chance of taking place sometime within the next five years.

Jay Yarow obtained a research note written by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, and in it, Munster stated, "We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company’s App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google’s search engine."

Munster then explained that this probably wouldn’t occur as a result of Mac, iPhone, and iPad engineers starting something from scratch.  He wrote, "[W]e feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company that has built a web index, like a Cuil, and utilize the index as the base for building its own engine."

This is an interesting idea, at the very least, and if Google’s and Apple’s relationship continues to worsen (see Google’s new partnership with Adobe as one example of things heading downhill), the odds of it becoming a reality will increase.

Of course, five years is a long time in this industry – Google’s market share hadn’t even crested the 50 percent mark in March of 2005 – so all manner of things may change before 2015 rolls around.

An investment firm that was founded in 1895 and earned almost $470 million in net revenue last year thinks it’s likely that Apple will build its own search engine.  Specifically, Piper Jaffray assigned this outcome a 70 percent chance of taking place sometime within the next five years.

Jay Yarow obtained a research note written by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, and in it, Munster stated, "We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company’s App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google’s search engine."

Munster then explained that this probably wouldn’t occur as a result of Mac, iPhone, and iPad engineers starting something from scratch.  He wrote, "[W]e feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company that has built a web index, like a Cuil, and utilize the index as the base for building its own engine."

This is an interesting idea, at the very least, and if Google’s and Apple’s relationship continues to worsen (see Google’s new partnership with Adobe as one example of things heading downhill), the odds of it becoming a reality will increase.

Of course, five years is a long time in this industry – Google’s market share hadn’t even crested the 50 percent mark in March of 2005 – so all manner of things may change before 2015 rolls around.

Sometime this month, Googlers who work on Android probably earned the right to pop the corks on a few bottles of champagne.  New stats from AdMob (which unfortunately only run through February) indicate that Android was poised to pass the iPhone in terms of U.S. market share.

AdMob found that the iPhone had a slight edge at the end of February: 44 percent versus 42 percent.  But at the rate Android’s market share has been increasing (and the iPhone’s market share has been decreasing), it’s likely to have taken the lead by now.

This would of course represent a major victory for Google.  It’d raise big questions about how much the scales will continue to tip, too – how low will the iPhone’s U.S. market share go before things stabilize?

The iPhone is still pretty dominant on a worldwide basis, though.  AdMob determined that its market share in that respect is 50 percent, while Android’s is 24 percent.  So while Android’s done well globally – it was at just 16 percent a year ago – Google has some work ahead of it overseas.

Maybe that just means Googlers can look forward to having a second day of champagne and celebrations at some point in the future.

Sometime this month, Googlers who work on Android probably earned the right to pop the corks on a few bottles of champagne.  New stats from AdMob (which unfortunately only run through February) indicate that Android was poised to pass the iPhone in terms of U.S. market share.

AdMob found that the iPhone had a slight edge at the end of February: 44 percent versus 42 percent.  But at the rate Android’s market share has been increasing (and the iPhone’s market share has been decreasing), it’s likely to have taken the lead by now.

This would of course represent a major victory for Google.  It’d raise big questions about how much the scales will continue to tip, too – how low will the iPhone’s U.S. market share go before things stabilize?

The iPhone is still pretty dominant on a worldwide basis, though.  AdMob determined that its market share in that respect is 50 percent, while Android’s is 24 percent.  So while Android’s done well globally – it was at just 16 percent a year ago – Google has some work ahead of it overseas.

Maybe that just means Googlers can look forward to having a second day of champagne and celebrations at some point in the future.

The arrival of Apple’s App Store in 2008 changed the marketplace for mobile developers and mobile carriers alike. The App Store changed the perception of what an app store for mobile devices should look like and started a new arms race among mobile carriers and handset manufacturers. According to a new survey by market research firm Nielsen, however, Apple is still ahead of its competitors. Apple’s customers install more applications on their device than users of any other platform and Apple’s customers are also more satisfied with Apple’s app store than the users of any other app store.

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Apps Installed Per Device

iPhone users have installed an average of 37 applications on their devices – more than the users on any other smartphone platform – while Blackberry users only use 10 apps on their phones. Android users have around 22 apps on their phones, followed by Palm users (14) and Windows Mobile users (13). Unsurprisingly, feature phone users don’t install a lot of apps on their devices. Only 12% of cell phone users with feature phones downloaded an app in the last 30 days. In contrast to this, about 46% of smartphone owners installed an app in the last month.

App Stores

With regards to the popularity of different app stores, Nielsen’s data isn’t that interesting, as most users don’t really have a choice. Apple’s App Store is the most used mobile app store and has captured 25% of the market, followed by Blackberry’s App World Store (16%). Carrier stores run by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are also still very popular and have a market share between 8% (T-Mobile) and 15% (Verizon). The Android Market only had about a 2% market share by the end of 2009, but given the small number of devices on the market at that time, this number will surely grow in 2010 as more device manufactures add Android devices to their lineup.

Customer Satisfaction

When it comes to customer satisfaction, Apple’s App Store and the Android Market are far ahead of their competitors. 84% of Apple’s users are satisfied with the user experience in the iTunes store and 81% of Android users are happy about their experience. All the other stores, however, still have a lot of catching up to do. In Nielsen’s survey, the Windows Marketplace ranked the lowest (56%), followed by the Blackberry App World store (58%).

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Although the "thud" wasn’t verified until this afternoon, it seems that an online giant fell a couple of days ago.  According to new data from Hitwise, Facebook managed to beat Google in terms of visits between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.

The graph visible below makes the changeup pretty clear (blame the sloppy enlarged bit on us, not Hitwise).  What’s more, it doesn’t look like Facebook’s going to relinquish its lead anytime soon.

Heather Dougherty explained, "The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame."

Then here’s one more interesting fact, courtesy of Dougherty: "Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week."

Anyway, this development represents a major win for Facebook.  The ability to represent the social network as the number one site should count for a lot as corporate representatives talk to advertisers and investors, and could result in a direct boost in revenue.  A further snowball effect in terms of user interest might occur, too, since most people like to be part of something that’s popular.