Google Chrome and South America, a love story
In just a couple of years, Google Chrome has firmly established itself as a web browser to be reckoned with. Where once you spoke of Internet Explorer and Firefox as the two big ones, these days the duo has become a trio. The browser wars are back. Chrome has started to edge out Firefox in some countries, and as you will see in this article, there are actually countries where it’s already become number one.
This is where South America comes into the picture. Nowhere is Chrome more successful than in that part of the world.
Chrome’s popularity by world region
It’s worth noting that when we talk about market share in this article, we mean share of web usage. The data we have is from StatCounter, which is based on visitor stats from more than three million websites.
As made exceedingly obvious by the above chart, Chrome’s popularity in South America is far ahead of the other world regions.
For added perspective, here is the same chart, sorted the same way, but with the market share of Internet Explorer and Firefox added into the mix.
A couple of takeaways:
- Chrome has passed Firefox in South America and is now behind 33.2% of the web usage in that region.
- In all other regions, the order is: IE, Firefox and then last, Chrome. That said, Chrome still has a significant chunk of the market in each region.
Plus a few general observations about IE and Firefox since we have the data right in front of us. We hope you’ll excuse us for this little tangent:
- The two strongest regions for Firefox in terms of market share are Africa and Europe. Interestingly, it’s almost neck-and-neck with Internet Explorer in both.
- For Internet Explorer, the two strongest regions are North America and Asia.
- The weakest region for Internet Explorer in terms of market share is Europe.
- The weakest region for Firefox is South America. Since it’s also Chrome’s strongest, it’s the only region where Chrome beats Firefox.
But this article is mainly about Google Chrome and its position in South America, so let’s look into that in more detail.
A closer look at Chrome in South America
As you can guess, Chrome has managed to break into first or second place in a number of South American countries. In fact, the vast majority of them. It’s number one in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, and number two in Brazil, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.
Here’s what the division between the top three web browsers looks like in these countries (i.e. in South American countries where Chrome is the second-most or most-used web browser):
Just like the other charts, this one was sorted by Chrome’s market share, largest at the top.
Now on to the obvious question…
Why South America?
That is an interesting question, isn’t it? Is Google’s brand and influence stronger in these countries, or are there other forces at play?
To be honest, we’re not sure why Chrome is so successful in South America, but maybe some readers with more insight into that region would like to chime in in the comments?
Perceptions matter, and the perception of Nokia in the news, on the web, and in the minds of many, is that things aren’t going that well. Even in the Pingdom office, we hear “Nokia is doomed,” but do the numbers support this belief?
Guillermo
August 26th, 2011 at 11:22 am
I think the reason is because South America usually has slower internet connections compared to North America, Asia and Europe and no everybody have powerful hardware so users wants to get as much speed as possible from their connection/hardware. Chrome uses less resources than IE or FF and is faster
Italo
August 26th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
i dont know why exactly, maybe we south-americans are very accustomed to changes, to conflict, poverty, rising again, all of this in a few years…maybe we embrace new good things quickly without thinking too much (maybe a mistake) but this has been the history of our generation…its hard to say…
Adelson (Gerenciando Blog)
August 26th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Hi!
That’s interesting. I’m from South America (from Brazil, more specifically) and loved Google Chrome since its firts beta version.
It’ so clean, so fast and so powerful that I actually ask another question: why is not so popular in all other regions?
Mita
August 28th, 2011 at 1:10 am
Would be interesting to see how many people have multiple browsers – and how many actually use the IE installed
Marcelo
August 28th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
I am from south america and a couple of us are using chrome because: a) the automated translation from english, b) it is better on our small screens, c) it is new, and we like new, d) we will always jump in if there is a promise of speed.
carlos
August 28th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Hi I’m from Venezuela, I in particular like to use Google Chrome and Firefox because they are faster and easier to use.
Marcel Dias
August 28th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
In one word? Orkut.
richardigp
August 29th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
We serve learning content to 20,000 students in Brazil from AWS and these stats reflects what we see. What doesn’t come out of these statistics is browser version spread. Chrome versions are spread across the spectrum from 8-13 with slowish uptake of the latest versions. How that is done with auto version updates I don’t know. Another missing stat is Browser unidentified – runs at nearly 20% for our stats from Brazil. Firefox uptake of latest versions is very high. A different type of user? Who knows, but it is fun guessing.
jkls
August 29th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Maybe Google has more aggressive marketing campaigns running in these countries… Only Google knows why!
Daniel - Facebook en español
September 5th, 2011 at 10:53 am
i’m from southamerica and yes, I love Google Chrome!
Harry
September 8th, 2011 at 11:15 am
It could be because in South America google’s previous social network Orkut had and still has a major market share. Facebook is edging it out now, but they may have used Orkut to push Chrome.
Dave
September 13th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
My guess is that computers in South America tend to be controlled by savvier users. That is, there may be fewer casual users who are using IE.
It would make sense for this to be true if Internet use in general is not as ubiquitous as in some Western countries, or if there are obstacles that only techies are willing to overcome. Maybe the cost is higher, it’s more difficult to get a landline connection, etc.
Bruno
September 15th, 2011 at 8:08 am
It’s not only just about slow internet connections, but also about computers with limited physical memory and security.
Additionally: For Orkut Users (great part of the BR audience) Chrome is associated with security and improved rendering. The new Orkut UI and IE combination are tragic for users.
mike
September 20th, 2011 at 10:04 am
The same data is visualized as a nice world map at http://www.browserrank.com. Check out the different browser preferences by country.
Markus
September 22nd, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Very intersting article as the number of Google Chrome users of our German financial news website (530000 unique user per month) is completely different.
We only have 4,69 % Chrome users, but 46,87 % IE users.
The reason for this is that many of our users visit our media from office (e.g. banks) where they have an IE installed on their computers and they can not use other software.
I think that Guillermo’s explaination is very realistic for the very high usage of Chrome in South America. A lot of private internet users and a lean browser because of the slow interent connection.
gabriel
September 23rd, 2011 at 4:33 pm
There was a moment when chrome popularity raised a significant quantity of users in Argentina, where I live, and was the success of cuevana.tv a very popular site to watch movies online that needs a plugin that its best version works in Chrome. There was the breaking point when Chrome gained popularity in mainstream people.
Teodor
September 26th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Im’ from Greece. Here the Google Chrome is in 3rd position! I believe that I.E. is faster…
devon
November 20th, 2011 at 5:25 am
It came bundled with skype, flash player and acrobat reader.