News is out that IE share continues to drop steadily in the (seemingly interminable) browser wars, while Google Chrome has undergone a market share growth spurt, jumping from 1.8% to 6.7% in the past 12 months.
Yet some would-be pundits (notably, the dart-throwers here at Traffick) initially expected Chrome to reach 15% by September 2010 (there is still a slim chance). After thinking it over, in comments I revised that to “7.5% to 15%” based on the attitude that consumers don’t like change in things like operating systems and browsers.
The discussions and debates in 2009 were very clear: early adopters were constantly blown away by Chrome’s speed and expected Google to push the other browsers. And when Google pushes (or punches) hard, like with GMail, often competitors fail to answer the bell. At the same time, consumers don’t always switch as fast as the early adopters would have them do.
This all seems to be playing out as expected, then. Early growth was very slow, and as a result, 6.7% share is behind schedule. But the recent growth has been rapid, and it doesn’t look like 15% share is going to be a problem for Chrome. It will just happen 6-12 months later than expected — sometime in 2011.