Ok – This may come as a surprise to you, but here is a stat about browsers that will really surprise you. UC Browser is the most popular browser used by Indians whether it is on the web or mobile or on any other device. And, you thought it was Chrome right…
According to latest Statcounter report for India UC browser which commands 21.44 percent market share in India. It is all the more surprising because UC browser is not available as a web browser, but only as a mobile browser.
On the other hand, Chrome, which is an extremely popular web browser and is also available on all major mobile platforms including Android, iOS and Windows comes in at second position with 19.53 percent market share. Firefox comes in at 3rd with 18.57% market share.
Top 9 Browsers in India
Surprisingly, it is India where UC browsers popularity seems to be very high. On a global level, it is only the 8th most popular browser, having a miniscule 2.63 percent market share. Somehow, Indians love UC browser over everything else.
One of the reasons is that UC browser is a Java based browser, and is available even on low end phones. Penetration of high end smartphones in India is pretty miniscule – less than 15%. And on these low end phones, there seem to be not many options other than UC Browser, which could be the reason for its popularity!
PC Web Browser Market Share
However, when it comes to desktop web browsers alone, there is no match for the popularity of Google’s Chrome browser. In India, they have a market share of 56.86 percent! This is phenomenal considering that Chrome is the youngest browser of all!
In last one year alone Chrome has been able to increase their market share by whopping 10 percent. In December of 2012, they 46.24 percent share.
Firefox comes in as the 2nd most popular browser, however their market share has fallen from 32.23% last December to 27.88 percent in December 2013.
Internet Explorer, which ruled the previous decade has fallen from 17.68% last year to just 12.05% this year… (Good riddance I say!)
Chrome also comes out top globaly, with 46.63 percent internet users using it as their favored desktop browser.
Majority of Indians in India use mobiles to surf the internet now. UC browser is mainly a mobile browser and chrome also has mobile features. Hence, this result is not surprising. I would like to know the usage of pc based browsers in India.
Good article.
but i don’t agree with the line “And on these low end phones, there seem to be not many options other than UC Browser”
Maybe you forgot Opera mini which covers all the phones which UC does.
as a tech geek i can say the actual reason behind the success of UC is its features.
And there are many.
Karan, I do agree UC browser is great, but most users with basic phones generally have both. And Opera Mini has been around much before UC and hence they still do have many users..
[…] market share in India making it the top mobile browser by a fair margin. The analysis that we carried out few days back showed that it has around 22 percent market share in among Indian smartphone […]