The Winners and Losers of 2010

Now that NetMarketShare's data for December 2010 is in the can, we can take a look at the winners and losers of 2010 in the browsers and operating systems category.

First browsers. Here the winner is clear - Google Chrome, which saw its usage share more than double, rising from 4.63% in December 2009 to 9.98% in December 2010. A missive rise which has seen the browser leap ahead of Apple's Safari (which gained a little ground, up from 4.46% in December 2009 to 5.89% in December 2010) and Opera (which lost ground, going from 2.40% in December 2009 to 2.23% in December 2010).

The biggest loser on the browser front was Microsoft's Internet Explorer. IE saw its usage share fall from 62.69% in December 2009 to 57.08% in December 2010.

Firefox, once the pin-up browser for geeks the world over, saw its usage share fall from 24.61% in December 2009 to 22.81% in December 2010.

Internet Explorer 8 commands a usage share of 33.02%, Firefox 3.6 18.50%, and Internet Explorer 6 (yes, that old dog) still clings on to 13.06%.

Let's take a look at operating systems. Apple had a mixed year. Usage share for Mac OS fell slightly, down from 5.11% in December 2009 to 5.02% in December 2010. Apple's mobile platform iOS, did better with it's usage share climbing from 0.53% to 1.69% over the same period.

Linux dawdled around the 1% mark all year.

Microsoft saw usage share for the behemoth OS Windows fall slightly too, down from 92.21% in December 2009 to 90.29% in December 2010. Windows 7 now commands a usage share of 20.87%, Vista 12.11% and XP a whopping 56.72%.

NetMarketShare uses data captured from the 160 million unique visitors browsing some 40,000 Web sites it monitors for clients.

Anyone want to make some predictions for what we'll see for 2011?