Microsoft Edge usage doubles in a year (according to Microsoft)
While Microsoft Edge sits pretty steady between 4% and 5% of the overall usage share on desktop computer systems, usage has actually doubled in a year's time according to Microsoft.
A recent tweet fired off from the official Microsoft Edge Dev account suggests that Edge is used on 330 million devices each month.
That's more than double the 150 million figure that Microsoft officials revealed back in April of 2016.
Microsoft held the Microsoft Edge Web Summit 2017 on September 13, 2017, and the new usage count was revealed during summit's keynote.
The Twitter message reads: Microsoft Edge users are activate on 330 million monthly devices! Tune in now to Edge Summit keynote.
Any device that Edge is being started on at least once a month is counted towards the number. So, heave daily Edge use and once a month Edge sessions count both towards the number.
Microsoft counts Edge on all available platforms that run Windows 10. This includes PCs and mobile devices, and also virtual machines that Edge is run in.
The "active devices" metric is not overly accurate because of that, but also because it cannot be equated with the same number of users. A user may run Edge on multiple devices, and others may share a PC.
Microsoft Edge is only available on devices running Windows 10, and the last Windows 10 user metric that Microsoft revealed was that the operating system was installed on more than 500 million devices.
How does the number stack up to Microsoft's main competition? Techcrunch ran a story back in November 2016 in which it cited Google's Darin Fisher saying that 2 billion active Chrome installs were in use across desktop and mobile devices.
Mozilla meanwhile revealed in September 2015 that 500 million people around the world use the Firefox web browser.
Google uses the same metric as Microsoft -- device installs -- to highlight the distribution of the browser on the desktop and on mobile.
It is fair to say that the number of devices that Edge is being used on at least once per month has doubled in a year. That's good news for Microsoft, but the vagueness of the data makes it impossible to dig deeper and find out how well Edge is really doing, especially when usage tracking companies suggest that the browser is not really improved usage share wise.
Now You: Have you tried Edge?
Most people leave Edge as the default browser, but use Chrome or Firefox daily. Edge will then open whenever a program brings the user to the web, using the default browser. MS is lying with statistics here.
I’d rather trust Netmarketshare and Statcounter, yeah, even though they are imperfect. Microsoft should count monthly users who used the browser more than X time and for more than X hours total.
Edge makes Internet Explorer seem like a good browser. Everything is horrible about it, even the icon is hideous. Chromium is a much, much better browser, if you like the idea of a simple, easy to use browser – it has a faster rendering engine, an infinitely smoother UI (seriously, last time I tried Edge, opening a new window felt like someone physically swapped my monitor with another one that had no website open on, that’s how clunky and sluggish Edge’s UI feels), and offers better codec support.
Overall, Edge: 2/10. One point for trying and another for the impressive capability of being able to download FireFox and Chrome.
I’m not an Edge user but I’ve noticed it actually scrolls much smoother than Chrome on complex pages.
I can’t stand how Edge moves the address bar down into the content area on new tabs, it’s infuriating!
The only time I use Edge is when I want to watch a flash video on some website that forces flash, another thing that I loathe, but I must say that on my infrequent interactions with Edge it does seem to run pretty smoothly and is light on resources.
Firefox FTW.
Every month there are new updates for the Edge browser.
Could it be that there are much more people than (Let say every month a million at least five) just me who only use once a month their Edge browser to check for the correctness (properly ) of installment of their Edge updates?
And is it fair the count user who only use their apparatus only once a month? Why not say at least five times?
Seriously .. that would mean they need to collect telemetry /s :)
I use Edge and I like it. It is not my primary browser, due to some lingering bugs that appear to be addressed in the upcoming fall update. Edge is very fast and can be buttery smooth in terms of its performance, but Vivaldi and Firefox remain my two primary browsers ahead of it. Once the Fall/Winter update is pushed through, I will give Edge another shot to see if the bugs I have occasionally notice have been fixed. I would also like to see more consistent extension support. uBlock Origin is one of the only extensions I use and it is available for Edge, however a 3rd party is responsible for updating the extension. This leads to somewhat inconsistent updates/releases for the extension. This also means that it is hard to give up Firefox and Vivaldi since those are “officials” branches of uBlock Origin and get better support.
“Microsoft Edge is only available on devices running Windows 10”
Very revealing detail. If you add Android and IOS devices to PCs running browsers other than Edge you can estimate how minuscule Edge’s marketshare really is.
I don’t use closed source browsers.
Microsoft – now providing glass-half-full, scammy and bogus statistics. Anything is possible from this treacherous company. They will even claim you have 1 million friends and that you downloaded Windows 10 1 billion times. DON’T TRUST THEM.
Many people were curious or used it to download Firefox with it, yet once started it reports back as being used from that account and there you go – statistics never lie!!!
How many of these “Active users” though are people making the odd web search from Cortana – seeing as MS now forces Edge/Bing for Cortana searches?
Funny isn’t it. Force people to use Edge for a major Windows feature, oh look! Edge usage has increased.
Who in their right mind will use a garbage like Edge? Even Vivaldi is better.
Edge is M$’s biggest failure after Windows 10.
I mainly use Edge every day, and chromium to go on the web adventures (I like to disable JavaScripts and images on many sites). I like edge because it’s very fast and above all there is now uBlock origin as an extension and others too. I like that it reads videos with very little CPU (12%) compared to other browsers that require 20%, it’s very good for my small laptop. Thanks to Edge Manager, I was able to equip myself with bookmarlets to make up for the lack of some extensions, download YouTube videos, check a url with virustotal, have a tinyurl, convert and save a page in eBook especially since Edge reads very well the eBook format now. The problem I’m having is with the password extensions, in fact, edge has a serious problem with the French keyboard and I can’t enter the “@”. The other problem is that we don’t have extensions in private mode.
Just using Edge for some financial sites that demand it over Chrome for whatever reasons. Do like that Edge is steadily improving. Seems quicker now. Couple times I even
forgot I was on Edge not Chrome. The upper spacing can be made minimal like Chrome and yes scrolling is better on some complex pages. As more anti & blocking apps gets
added to the Store choices there may become a higher user experience and numbers growth.
“Microsoft Edge usage doubles in a year (according to Microsoft)”
Yes, I can confirm this. I personally knew both of them. Both are also deeply sorry about their behavior and would like to apologize to the rest of the world and have promised to never do this again.
No I’ll just stick to the Tor Browser https://www.torproject.org/download