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WebM vs. H.264 on the desktop: The numbers
The discussion on Google's decision to remove H.264 from Chrome is still raging, and an argument that is brought up a lot is market adoption.Now, the primary video to serve video on the web today is Flash. It doesn't really matter which codec it's using because it's played through Flash anyway. But what about native HTML5 video support? Which format will have the widest support in the market?
Since browser statistics are highly unreliable, this is mostly a theoretical exercise. However, a lot of people like to refer to these numbers, so let's play the game and look at them in more detail. The source with the most detailed statistics is StatCounter.
So, the numbers...
The Totals
At first glance, the situation is looking very good for the H.264 camp. Internet Explorer is still the #1 browser worldwide, and Safari and IE together have well over 50% market share, according to StatCounter.
On the other hand, Opera, Chrome and Firefox have a combined market share of more than 40%.
As you can see, H.264 seems to have a slight edge here.
Native Numbers
But wait. There's a problem here. Only Opera, Chrome and Safari currently have final versions with native HTML5 video support with either H.264 or WebM support! IE9 and Firefox 4 are both still in beta. We can't just look at total numbers. We need to break down the numbers to specific versions, so that we can see the actual coverage of native video.
When we do this, an interesting picture emerges. Users of certain browsers upgrade much faster than users of other browsers. Someone actually analyzed this, and as you can see, far fewer users of the H.264 browsers run the latest version, compared to the browsers that support WebM.
What does this mean?
Trouble for H.264
It means that the adoption of upgraded versions is a major hurdle for H.264, and those who hoped for IE9 to save the day for the closed codec will be in for a nasty surprise.
If we look at the graphs at StatCounter, it is clear that both Firefox and Chrome experience rapid adoption of the latest version. Within 4 months of its release in January 2010, almost all Firefox users were on version 3.6, and nearly all Chrome users were on version 7 the month after it was released (October 2010).
On the other hand, if we look at the historical adoption rates for IE, they are considerably worse. IE8 was released in March 2009, and it took nearly 10 months for IE8 to overtake IE7!
This means that when Firefox 4 is released with WebM support, most Firefox users will probably be using it within a few months. On the other hand, IE9 is not likely to make a big difference for H.264 until a significant amount of time has passed.
More trouble for H.264
But the bad news for H.264 doesn't end here. You see, IE9 will only be available for Windows Vista and Windows 7. But Windows XP still makes up around 50% of the desktop OS market!
Sure, it is slowly declining, but combined with the slow migration to the latest IE version, this causes even more delays for native H.264 adoption in the browser market.
Possibly even more trouble for H.264
Will the bad news for H.264 ever end? One might perhaps have hoped that this was it, but there's potentially even more.
First some background: Opera, Chrome and Firefox are cross-platform browsers. This means that a lot of things are designed in a way that makes it easy to port them to different platforms. In some cases, this means sacrificing some OS integration. On the other hand, Safari and IE only have to deal with one platform (Safari on Windows doesn't really make much of a difference), so these can easily integrate into the OS of choice. This includes supporting any video codec installed on the system.
So while it might not be possible to add support for native H.264 in Opera, Chrome and Firefox beyond the default codecs in the browsers due to design choices that have to do with cross-platform portability, supporting WebM in Safari on Mac and IE on Windows could be as easy as installing it as a system codec.
Conclusion: The Numbers
As you can see, WebM has a huge advantage when it comes to browser adoption.
IE users are notoriously slow at upgrading, and IE9 will only be available for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Half of all Windows users will not be able to upgrade to IE9!
On the other hand, recent versions of Opera and Chrome already support WebM, users are upgrading to these versions much faster than they are upgrading Safari or IE, and Firefox 4 is likely to be released in the near future, thereby boosting the market share of WebM-supporting browsers to possibly more than 30-40%.
This leaves Safari basically carrying the torch for H.264 with little help from Internet Explorer. Within the next 12-24 months, H.264 might be lucky to have a market share above 10%!
As a final nail in the coffin, IE9 and Safari, being bundled with operating systems, are likely integrated with those operating systems in a way which makes adding WebM support as simple as installing it as a system codec.
The numbers are clear
If we are to trust the numbers from StatCounter, WebM basically owns the desktop browser market, or will, in the near future. H.264 has major problems due to slow uptake of newer versions of supporting browsers, and the fact that half of all Windows users are still on XP will be a major headache to Microsoft and, ironically, Apple.
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About this article
| Published in | A Journal from Behind the Trenches |
|---|---|
| Date | January 17, 2011 |
| Author | Haavard |
| Tags | statcounter, google, chrome, safari, apple, market share, h.264, opera, webm, internet explorer, microsoft, trollface.jpg |
| Original | Internet Archive |
netwolfMonday, January 17, 2011 1:39:29 PM
EDIT: correction to my correction: you're talking about "on the desktop"...
Artur „Jurgi” JurgawkaMonday, January 17, 2011 1:39:33 PM
But there may be – I'm afraid – one issue: H.264 owners may want to use some dirty tricks (e.g. patent trials) to stop WebM spreading.
eliotcougarMonday, January 17, 2011 1:40:33 PM
SavagemanMonday, January 17, 2011 1:53:59 PM
HaavardMonday, January 17, 2011 1:59:41 PM
GreLIMonday, January 17, 2011 2:24:40 PM
Charles SchlossMonday, January 17, 2011 3:40:54 PM
WebM Component:
http://code.google.com/p/webm/downloads/list
So I can add support for webm to a few more browsers that don't support webm natively
Not every one wants to have to use flash to play content (which requires the user to have a current version of flash (not to common)
The thing about IE is true, most people don't update on windows for a while as some programs use IE for the base code of the program, so they have to do testing so that it doe snot break other programs
ClashCityRockerMonday, January 17, 2011 3:59:41 PM
Charles SchlossMonday, January 17, 2011 4:33:47 PM
Originally posted by clashcityrocker:
Some of the videos have 1080p, it depend on the upload I think tho it is not to cpu friendly
I do look forward to webm use, there are a lot of independent film artists and webm would be easy in time to show off their work
HåkonMonday, January 17, 2011 5:08:10 PM
I'm not sure you will get the "last" 30-40% of Internet users to change from IE / Safari if YT starts to server crap video quality. They'll more likely think the video has low resolution and / or be angry at Google.
ChrisMonday, January 17, 2011 6:37:36 PM
Originally posted by haakoo:
That's not what happens in practice. Just look at YouTube. The same video is available for multiple resolutions and bandwidths. Sites are already carrying multiple copies of the same video!Cutting SpoonMonday, January 17, 2011 7:04:35 PM
Charles SchlossMonday, January 17, 2011 7:17:11 PM
Originally posted by haakoo:
Tho not every one can use flash on the desktop
HåkonMonday, January 17, 2011 7:26:23 PM
That WebM can't compete in quality (yet) is also a problem. There is a bit of hope that WebM might get close to H.264, but not in the near future.
And no, not everyone "can" use Flash, but that is mostly a choice people do. iOS devices can't show Flash, but they have H.264 as the video-tag. Again, one solution to (almost) all needs.
SavagemanMonday, January 17, 2011 7:27:50 PM
I still never saw anyone on the desktop not able to read Youtube videos (with flash). I also think Flash is a good solution to deliver video, whether it's H.264 or something else.
Do someone know when Flash Player will support WebM format? Or is there any reason it will never support it?
HåkonMonday, January 17, 2011 7:29:23 PM
ChrisMonday, January 17, 2011 8:04:09 PM
Originally posted by hellspork:
I disagree that the battleground will be on mobile. Operators are really starting to restrict data traffic, which will deal a huge blow to video. It will take much longer for video to really take off on mobile.ChrisMonday, January 17, 2011 8:07:46 PM
Originally posted by haakoo:
They don't have to. But they will do it anyway, because even small sites offer different sizes and resolutions due to different bandwidth and screen sizes. Storage is extremely cheap.No, the driving force behind standardization is that everyone can participate. It doesn't mean that you don't have to invest in infrastructure and other necessary things.
No, history shows that quality is irrelevant.
[/quote]In case you didn't notice, this is a blog post about desktop, where everyone can use Flash. If iOS devices were doing so great without Flash, people wouldn't be paying for even poor quality video transcoding services on the same devices.
lucideerMonday, January 17, 2011 9:47:24 PM
Originally posted by haavard:
It could be even easier than that. Having recently being party to the purchase of three new laptops for various friends/family of mine - all computers of different brands - I found amongst the various elephant-ware pre-installed on each of them, was Google Chrome. Many have chastised Microsoft for pre-installing IE with Windows, but not so many take time to consider OEM pre-installs. If Google are already doing this with Chrome, for many multiple manufacturers, I can very easily envisage the vast majority of Windows PCs bought in the near future coming with WebM pre-installed, and the user none-the-wiser.
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 1:00:01 AM
Second, dissecting total browser market share is poor analysis; it needs to be done on a platform by platform basis:
1. Windows. IE will remain the majority browser on Windows for quite a while; one can presume slow adoption of IE9, but I wouldn't count on it. Windows 7 growth outpaces Chrome growth, and IE6 and 7 aren't supported on 7 so the rate of upgrading the browser is actually much higher (because we all know that it is older corporate use holding back updates in the XP world). See Asa Dotzler's observations here:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/07/ie_8s_positive_impac.html
Even ahead of IE9's release, it's likely to surpass Chrome's share in short order (that is, well ahead of WebM hardware acceleration). Again, it doesn't matter: IE will remain the dominant browser on Windows.
2. Mac. Safari is also the dominant browser on Mac.
3. Linux. For obvious reasons, "ownership" is safe to claim here.
4. Mobile. Safari also has virtually equal share of mobile OS browser share as Opera, BlackBerry, and Nokia, and certainly has greater share of the most active web users on more powerful devices (and I'm unaware of BB and Nokia's plans to support WebM -- anyone know?). Mobile internet users will surpass the desktop around 2014 and already represent about 60% of desktop internet users.
So... you can look at total browser usage share, but in fact, you do not necessarily have support on the majority of desktop PCs (95% conservatively (PC + Mac) to be kind to Linux) and you certainly do not on the most significant new market to address with web-based video. Yes, Apple and Microsoft provide the choice to fall back to system installed codecs (thank you Apple and Microsoft), but that is no guarantee (I can assure you that I am either stopping updates or removing Chrome the day this change occurs and refusing to download plug-ins to support WebM until WebM actually represents the majority of video delivered on the web via the video tag).
Opera, will you please support fallback to system codecs for the top 4 OS frameworks (QT, whatever Windows is these days, GStreamer, and ffmpeg)? I understand the resources needed to do so are not inconsiderable, but I think you will find users appreciative. Consumers are practical, not ideological. Even if you think you are acting on behalf of consumers, they will disagree with you if it is inconvenient.
lucideerTuesday, January 18, 2011 1:39:44 AM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
No. Dissecting total share takes into account the relative significance of who runs which platform. Your analysis complete ignores the fact that MacOS and mobile only have ~5% each, and Linux much less (your mobile analysis also seems to ignore Google Android, which has already overtaken iOS).
Looking at platform share shows us the battle will be decided on Windows - and by extension probably by IE.
1. If as you propose, IE9 is quickly adopted, OEM pre-installs of WebM will probably still win it for WebM.
2. If IE9 is quickly adopted and there are no WebM pre-installs, Google can still push WebM installs through their massive online presence - Youtube, GMail and possibly even google.com
3. Even if Google fails utterly to get Windows users to install WebM (which seems unlikely), you're still pitting IE's ~50% with Firefox+Chrome+Opera's ~47% - that might seem a slight edge for h.264, but given (a) WebM will be on at least some IE systems and (b) the IE9 upgrade will never be 100% - that's still a marginal win for WebM.
And of the above 3 scenarios, #3 is least likely. And #4 (slow IE9 adoption) is even more likely imo.
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 1:53:38 AM
First, the latter point: nope, I am using the same data as Haavard; mobile Android is the 5th most popular browser on mobile devices.
Yes, I understand it is true that Mac only represents 5% of the desktop market, but observing total browser share is far more innocuous than saying, "We don't feel it's necessary to support 30+ million worldwide Mac users." Just as Linux users and FSF advocates don't like to be the 2% that can be ignored in the case of H.264 access.
Mobile internet usage as measured by bandwidth is only 5%, but as measured by users it is 60% and growing rapidly of all desktop users. In essence, it will shortly be the same market as desktop users where usage is "part-time" but the expectations of access remain the same.
"Looking at platform share shows us the battle will be decided on Windows - and by extension probably by IE."
I cannot find a single video content provider willing to ignore the Mac or iOS. Pure market share is not always a valid measure; influence can go far beyond pure numbers.
"... that's still a marginal win for WebM."
And that's still a far cry from complete ownership, isn't it?
lucideerTuesday, January 18, 2011 2:27:50 AM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
Ah, ok. I'd not looked at that - I was going on the recent US market share reports that have been blogged about everywhere. I guess world usage hasn't quite caught up with the US yet...
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
It's not a matter of ignoring. I have never proposed that anyone would/should be ignored. It's a matter of prioritising the dominant platform/format. If a video provider is providing content today, the choice is typically Flash. Flash is the dominant method for providing video. Flash owns video on the web. This doesn't mean iOS users get no video.
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
It is, but it's highly unlikely. My point was - WebM ownership=likely, close battle with WebM still ahead=unlikely - either way doesn't look too good for h.264
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 2:43:42 AM
No, it means the only market for which video providers will use the video tag to target is iOS (and as a result the Mac and any other supported platform) via h.264 support because IT CANNOT BE IGNORED.
"It is, but it's highly unlikely. My point was - WebM ownership=likely, close battle with WebM still ahead=unlikely - either way doesn't look too good for h.264"
Really? Take a look at any market where video intersects, and see how things measure up. This post (47% share for proposed native browser support of WebM v. 51.73% share for proposed native browser support of H.264) doesn't negate the fact that the conclusion from the previous post addressing Google's action is that producers will fall back to Flash and still serve h.264 natively to iOS (and anyone else that supports it).
ChrisTuesday, January 18, 2011 1:38:48 PM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
Flash is irrelevant when what's being discussed is native video support. I suggest you pay attention to the topic.Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
I don't see why. It doesn't change anything.Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
Someone is not paying attention again. This is about desktop browsers.Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
You seem to be forgetting that Windows 7 comes with IE8.Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
Except history shows that IE users are notoriously slow at upgrading. Once again you didn't read the actual text.Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
Is irrelevant to this blog post because it's about desktops.Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
But again, this is about desktop (and iOS has an extremly low share of the total market).Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
You have failed to look at the correct numbers. The only browsers with native video support today are Opera, Chrome and Safari (the latest final Firefox version doesn't support WebM). Safari only has 5%, while Chrome+Opera have up to 15%. When Firefox 4 is released, this will grow by at least 15-20% within a couple of months.Shouldn't you actually read before commenting, and try to not change the subject all the time?
Mad Scientist (عادل)Tuesday, January 18, 2011 1:44:07 PM
My experience is that, on mobile, I use a translator site to get a 3gpp version of videos because video streaming is unreliable in my area. On my netbook, flash is my 'only' option most times and it regularly freezes my system because of insufficient ram.
Desktops are hardly ever bought by consumers around here anymore so those people who have desktops are mostly running old hardware and XP. (this is for KwaZuluNatal in South Africa.)
So, given a choice between WebM and Flash, I'd think WebM is more likely to be prefered. As for H264, it really isn't available except through flash under these circumstances, is it?
Of course, we have to accept that South Africa pretty much follows whatever happens in America so that's where it will be decided for us.
P.S: I don't have a Mac because I simply can't afford one. But we cannot ignore the Mac platform in this argument as the number one reason for getting a Mac (specifically) is for it's multimedia capabilities. So while PC users watch videos online for fun, Mac users actually work with videos online.
ChrisTuesday, January 18, 2011 1:47:33 PM
Talking about mobile here is missing the point. And that's even before mentioning that carriers are restricting bandwidth, meaning that video will only get worse and less accessible on mobile, at least in the next few years.
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 7:04:34 PM
Chris, you can try to argue that none of what I said is relevant but we are fundamentally talking about adoption and usage leading to a standard (either by de facto status or by mandate). My argument's validity has nothing to do with whether or not you or a blog post sanctions it as so.
Mad Scientist (عادل)Tuesday, January 18, 2011 8:57:11 PM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
I never said I wasn't.
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 9:16:04 PM
Mad Scientist (عادل)Tuesday, January 18, 2011 9:28:56 PM
I'm currently downloading a YouTube video that is probably using H264, but that's via Flash. And flash is wasting 12Mib of ram at the moment. I'd rather not be using flash. So I am not using H264 for the HTML5 video tag. (which is the point of this discussion)
And chances are, neither are you!
ChrisTuesday, January 18, 2011 9:49:56 PM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
No, we are talking about adoption in desktop browsers. Your argument does not belong here if it isn't even relevant to the discussion.There are hundreds of other sites you can discuss other aspects of this. This particular blog post deals with one specific topic: Desktop browsers.
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 10:03:49 PM
Chris, feel free to ignore me; you don't make a good argument for openness by telling me to go away.
"And chances are, neither are you!"
Nope, Mad Scientist, I certainly am, everyday for almost a year now. And it's part of my argument that it's irrelevant if it's via the video tag anyway: you are consuming h.264 in every other way that you consumer digital video in your daily life -- Opera support for WebM via video tag isn't changing that.
ChrisTuesday, January 18, 2011 10:13:21 PM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
Do I really have to repeat this? The iPad is not a desktop computer. It is not relevant here. Never mind the fact that it only sold 7 million, and mostly replaces notebooks (PC sales are up).Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
It is you who are trying to change the subject. The blog post has a clear topic. If you don't want to discuss that, there are hundreds of other blogs where you can discuss what you want to.Opera Community ModeratorTuesday, January 18, 2011 10:19:09 PM
Tim FaulknerTuesday, January 18, 2011 11:05:01 PM
ChrisTuesday, January 18, 2011 11:29:04 PM
Originally posted by TimFaulkner:
It's a blog post about desktop browsers. It doesn't really matter what you think is relevant. The person who owns the blog decides the topic. It sounds more like you are desperate to discredit anything that can be interpreted as being bad news for h264. You even ignored the moderator's instructions.And indeed, desktop being the biggest market by far, and the market share and upgrade frequency of WebM browsers vs. h264 browsers, is very bad news indeed for h264.
So let's at least discuss the topic: How terrible the desktop browser market looks for h264. As I did in this post.
Feel free to make your own blog about other topics.
Tim FaulknerWednesday, January 19, 2011 12:22:32 AM
And as I said previously, it doesn't look bad at all. H.264 via the video tag can only be ignored if you fall back to Flash.
ChrisWednesday, January 19, 2011 12:47:35 PM
WebM, on the other hand, will soon get Firefox added to the existing 10-15%, which means that WebM browsers will be around 35-45% (and growing) of the total desktop browser market.
Cutting SpoonWednesday, January 19, 2011 6:56:32 PM
Originally posted by Slamdex:
You neglect small screens with access to Wifi. For dataplans, highly efficient 240p and 360p streams are vital to the success of WebM.
On desktop I anticipate that IE9 will not ship for most of a year. Within three months, Firefox 4.0 should land. By summer, fully half of all desktop browsers will be WebM-capable. And IE8 could support WebM (though not fully) if Microsoft updates Windows Media Player, or ships a patch via Windows Update. The desktop penetration of WebM could be above 70% by year's end, or >90% if Adobe ships WebM-enabled Flash in the near term. This is why I said the battle will be on mobile devices.
Current support for ogg is probably less than 20%, with ogv probably under 5%. WebM has....0% support in hardware. There may be some software decoding available as a device update, but that's it. Even as smartphones and media devices begin to outsell PCs. It will be a win for WebM if even 1/3 of new smartphones include playback support in 2011. Provided the codec gains traction, we could see >60% decoding support and >40% encoding support by the end of 2012.
Thanks to their differences, transcoding from WebM to H.264/AAC would probably favor the original WebM source. With people originally recording in WebM, the derivatives would suffer in perception of quality. This would further speed adoption rates.
MaximThursday, January 20, 2011 2:58:21 AM
Cutting SpoonThursday, January 20, 2011 3:25:22 AM
lucideerThursday, January 20, 2011 4:32:30 AM
Originally posted by hellspork:
I believe I wrote that userscript (unless there's more than one), and it's currently broken (due to Youtube code-changes - native right-click works, but the native player doesn't ). I'll have a look at fixing it and porting to extensions.
Charles SchlossThursday, January 20, 2011 6:13:56 AM
Cutting SpoonThursday, January 20, 2011 11:06:26 PM
It happens for me if I post in a page that was open when I last closed the whole browser. But pressing "back" allows me to return and copy my submission, F5 and post.
ChrisWednesday, February 2, 2011 11:00:03 AM
Originally posted by hellspork:
Wifi is limited. Mobile video is going to be held back for years.That is not correct, and all future Android devices will have hardware support.
HugoWednesday, February 9, 2011 7:54:20 PM
So basically, your choice is either to provide two videos... one webm and one mp4. Or you provide only mp4 with flash fallback. But in both cases you will need h264.
ChrisWednesday, February 9, 2011 8:22:30 PM
Originally posted by Hugo2006:
Your opinion doesn't really change the fact that this is a blog post about desktop adoption.Mobile is not going to affect desktop any time soon. And when it does, it will be to the detriment of Apple.
The problem is that the iPhone is losing market share, and Android is growing very fast. It will be much more important to content owners to reach Android than iPhone.
This is not relevant, however, since this is a discussion about desktop computers.
HugoWednesday, February 9, 2011 8:39:53 PM
HugoThursday, February 10, 2011 8:45:17 AM
Right now, if i want to reach every desktop browser, the easiest way is h264 either via the video tag or a flash player. I would reach Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari (and also every mobile browser).
With webm, right now I would reach only Opera and Chrome.
Firefox supporting webm won't change very much to that. With h264, I would still reach any possible browser. But not with webm.
So why on earth should I encode all my videos in h264 AND webm if h264 alone will do?