Feb Browser share: IE, Chrome lose; Firefox, Safari gain

Net Applications has released browser market share numbers for February 2012.

Among the desktop browsers, Internet Explorer (IE) could not repeat the success of last month and lost market share. Chrome also lost market share for the second consecutive month, while the other three major browsers, Firefox (FF), Safari and Opera, gained.

In the Mobile browser segment, Safari and Android increased their share and now combined account for 81% of the total pie while Opera saw its market share decline of 5%. Overall, mobile market share continue to show major month over month changes, though Safari has consistently accounted for over half of the pie.

Let us look at the numbers in more detail.

Flash or no Flash? Adobe releases Flash roadmap, Mobile flash is history

Adobe has published roadmap for its Flash Player and its desktop counterpart, Adobe AIR. Overall the company expects Flash to cater predominantly to gaming and premium video markets. And as stated before, mobile version will no longer be developed.

The company plans 3 versions in the coming future Flash Player 11.2 (1Q 2012), Cyril (2Q 2012) and Dolores (2H 2012).

Further ahead with Flash Player Next, Adobe plans to update Actionscript language and work on the Actionscript Virtual machine. Initial releases for next are planned for 2013.

Jelly Bean to launch in Q2, Google targeting Windows 8 tablets

A Taiwanese news publication, DigiTimes, has claimed that Google will launch the next version of Android, code named Jelly Bean, in Q2 2012. According to the news report, Chrome is going to be integrated with Android. (It is to be noted that Google had recently released a version of Chrome capable of running on Android.)

DigiTimes further states that Google will oush vendors to adopt a dual-boot system design capable of running Android and Windows.

DigiTimes further claims that "However, since Android 4.0 did not perform as well as expected, several of Google's downstream partners are turning conservative about Android 5.0."

I think the claims of Q2 launch are very aggressive. Fragmentation is very high in Android, and as per Google only 1.0% of devices so far have ICS.