For comparison, Google Chrome for Android has about 1 billion.īut what percentage of Samsung device owners actually use Samsung Internet? The Google Chrome number spans all device types and is not directly comparable with the Samsung number, which is limited to Samsung devices. Samsung Internet (which is the official, and quite boring, name of the Samsung Chromium browser) has about 400 million active users globally (source: the interview below). On the other hand, the use of non-Google Chromia is clearly bound to device market share, and seeing that Samsung is by far the largest Android vendor, with about 37% market share, the conclusion that the Samsung Chromium browser would be the largest of the non-Google ones was fairly obvious from the start. Until this year, no public source has made any distinction between Google Chrome and the vendor-specific Chromia. Mobile browser market shares, unfortunately, are hard to obtain. I became interested in this topic back in early 2015, and apart from attempting to notify other web developers that there are several Chromia - which is the proper, Latinate plural of Chromium (my classical education will show from time to time) - and being met with total disinterest, I tried to find some solid numbers on how many people exactly are using a non-Google Chrome for Android. See, for instance, Can I Use’s comparison of the Samsung browser and the latest Chrome.
Still, there are a few differences in certain CSS, JavaScript and interface features that web developers need to know about. There are no huge incompatibilities in the rendering layer lying in wait to trap the unaware web developer. To me, this is not a desirable situation.Īt their core, these Chromium-based browsers are the same. Thus, most modern Android devices come with two Chromium-based browsers installed - but web developers test only in Google Chrome and tend to forget about Samsung Chromium, and HTC Chromium, and LG Chromium, and all of the others.
To make matters more complicated, most vendors are contractually obliged to install Google Chrome on their devices as well. Instead, they took an older Chromium version of their choice, modified it somewhat, and added it to their devices as “Internet” or “Browser.” In the past few years, just about all Android device vendors have upgraded their default browsers to Chromium… but not to Google Chrome. Still, it's one I've wanted to write for 18 months, so it kind of evens out.
Immediate and full disclosure: Samsung paid me to write this article. After discussing the general state of affairs in this article, we'll focus on the Chromium-based Samsung browser specifically. Still, too few web developers realize that these Chrome for Android numbers in fact contain several browsers, not just Google Chrome. All data is (c) CentralNic Ltd ()Īccess to the Whois and RDAP services is rate limited.Peter-Paul Koch was granted access to Samsung’s browser engineers a few weeks in advance of the rest of the world, and because he wanted to get a grip on the non-Google Chromium market and understand Samsung’s goals and ideas, he interviewed Jungkee Song from the Samsung Internet team.Īccording to browser statistics, Chrome for Android is currently the largest mobile browser, or is about to become so. Abuse of this service is monitored andĪctions in contravention of these terms will result in being permanentlyīlacklisted. Ownership of domain names, (2) not to store or reproduce this data inĪny way, (3) not to use any high-volume, automated, electronic processes Information presented here for any purpose other than determining By using this service you are agreeing (1) not to use any Information pertaining to Internet domain names registered by our The Whois and RDAP services are provided by CentralNic, and contain
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