I just came across an interesting blog entry, the author is the COO of Mozilla, was wondering the browser market share in the future would only controlled by two parties, i.e. IE (Internet Explorer) and Safari.

Some of its excerpt:

This world view that Steve gave a glimpse into betrays their thinking: it’s out-of-date, corporate-controlled, duopoly-oriented, not-the-web thinking. And it’s not good for the web. Which is sort of moot, I think, because I don’t think this 2 party world will really come to be.

Steve asserted Monday that Safari on Windows will overturn history, attract 100M new users, and revert the world to a 2 browser state. That remains to be seen, of course.

I agreed with John’s viewpoint. For Safari, a newly released browser, it can’t get ubiquity. When Safari can’t get ubiquitous, or can’t get the volume on the Web, I wonder how could they get the market share later.

Source: adapted from http://planet.mozilla.org/diggmirror/index.html, accessed 16 June 2007

Update: Found a clip on YouTube about the talk of Steve Jobs on Safari browser at the Apple WWDC 2007, as embedded in the below.

From recent buzz on the Web, few are arguing on the speed of Apple’s Safari 3, Apple’s newest browser that just released to the market. Whether or not, it is faster or the slower than Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera browser, as demonstrated in two different charts, it’s a debatable question. In the meantime, I just came across a forum, a user stated that by using a Javascript speed test, it showed Safari 3 indeed faster than the other browsers on the Web, i.e. average time is 123, Aha!

Source: available at http://www.apple.com/safari/, accessed June 14 2007

Source: available at http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/wired_news_benc.html, accessed June 14 2007

Albeit that this feature is their strongest selling point, and of course, its biggest appeal, and some Mac users thought Safari browser is terrific, but I don’t think Apple can build an empire for Safari browser by simply relied on this “faster speed” feature. Was faster speed the answer for all the browsers, I wondered?

Apple has released its Safari 3 for Mac and Windows platforms, a tactical move for them to sow the seeds of the browser war in the future. Coined as twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2, according to Apple’s press release. Currently, Safari 3 offered in three different versions, i.e. Safari plus QuickTime for Windows XP and Vista, or a solely Safari executable file and the Safari for Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later, as listed in Apple’s Safari download page. But I’m not so sure whether this Safari 3 for Windows platform will be regarded as a product that clamored by the Windows users?

However, the most interesting part is that Apple have to pacify some of the critics especially this newly release product may have easily been hit by bugs. Though Apple not officially comment on this issue, hot on the wheel of this potential problem come another one, Safari 3 does not support Chinese character in a proper manner. According to a Chinese blog (in Mandarin), in order to use Safari 3 to view the Chinese character, two (2) main prerequisites must be fulfilled: A user’s system must have pre-installed Microsoft JhengHei, one of the popular East Asian User Interface fonts; A user must also customize her browser’s character encoding to this Microsoft JhengHei as well.

I predict that there’s more to develop if Apple really want to earn a chunk of the market share among the Windows users.