Apple's Safari has been frowned upon a number of developers and users. But still, it has become the first-ever web browser to reach 1 billion users.
It's important to note that the numbers include mobile users, not just desktop users.
And here, Safari's status as the default browser on iPhones and iPads, also gained significant boost in number as it is also the default browser on Mac computers.
"1,006,232,879 internet users (19.16% of all internet users) now use the Safari browser, making it the second browser with over a billion users," said Atlas VPN in a blog post
But regardless, Safari's feat is impressive given that Safari is the only major web browser that doesn't have presence on Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system, or Windows, the most popular desktop operating system.
The post also explained how it got to the number, saying that the statistics are based on the GlobalStats browser market share percentage.
This number was then converted into numbers using the Internet World Stats internet user metric to retrieve the exact numbers.
While Safari has surpassed one major milestone by crossing the 1 billion user threshold, the browser is still far behind Chrome.
According to the report, Chrome has approximately 3,378,967,819 users, a number that is more than three times what Safari is having.
In a very distant third place, is Microsoft's Edge, with 212,695,363.
Right behind it, is Mozilla Firefox, with 179,084,244.
The blog post said that Edge only just overtook Firefox for the third-place spot in 2021.
And at fifth and sixth place, include Samsung and Opera, with 149 million users and 108 million users, respectively.
It has been for more than a long time that Chrome dominates the industry, after it surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Google's strategy is to reach all corners and gain the most amount of users by supporting all platforms.
In order to run on iOS ecosystem, Google doesn't even care when it is forced to use Safari's core technologies under the hood; limiting many of its potentials. This is because on iOS, Apple forces any apps that can browse the web to use its WebKit browser engine.
And as for Apple, the company used to have a similar ambition with Safari, and once even had a Windows version of the browser.
However, Apple discontinued the strategy, and stopped developing Safari for Windows in 2010.
As the Atlas VPN's statistics, it's worth noting that the Internet World Stats data dates back to December 31, 2021, which may not necessarily be as accurate a combined metric as intended.