Various sources have reported that, for the first time, in August 2019 the market share of Edge overtook that of Internet Explorer (IE) on the PC platform. This sounds good but taken in context it is not such a great achievement. In the ‘league table’ Edge now takes third place above IE (in fourth) but only with around 7-7.5% of market share. Although this is very close to the market share of Firefox, it is massively behind that of, market leader, Google Chrome with a share of nearly 80% of the market.
Microsoft Edge has had mixed reviews since its release in 2015 but with the latest version, Anaheim, Microsoft have got a browser that is much better equipped to compete with Google Chrome. In fact, it is based on the Chromium source code and uses the same rendering engine as Google Chrome but with enhancements overlaid by Microsoft. Preview builds have received very good reviews and are gaining Edge greater respect in the tech media.
Of particular interest to us at webZeppelin was that in May the first preview builds of Edge for macOS were made available. This was the first time in 13 years that a Microsoft browser had been available for Macintosh computers. Microsoft withdrew IE from the Mac platform in January 2006. So far we have found Edge to be reliable and speedy, with a clean UI. When Microsoft bundle free, basic versions of their Office 365 software with this, including Outlook, it becomes a very compelling package on the Mac. We expect to see Edge take a bigger market share in 2020.