Chrome, Internet Explorer Lead Browser Speed Tests

New data from New Relic shows Chrome and IE9 deliver fastest PC browsing experience, BlackBerry Opera Mini leads on mobile

San Francisco - April 5, 2012

New Relic, Inc., the SaaS-based cloud application performance management provider, released today the results of its most recent study on browser speed and performance. Using data from its free Real User Monitoring feature, which monitors 5 billion page views a week, New Relic surveyed speed and usage for popular PC and mobile browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Windows Internet Explorer, and Apple Safari. According to the study, Internet Explorer 9 (IE 9) surpasses Google Chrome for speed on Windows platforms, while Chrome 13 on Mac offers the fastest overall browsing experience. BlackBerry Opera Mini provides the fastest mobile browsing experience, twice as fast as its iPad counterparts.

"Despite significant advances in browser technology, most users still have a sub-par web browsing experience," said Chris Cook, president and COO at New Relic. "We found that the average page load time was still more than five seconds. Most people sense a delay on a web page after the blink of an eye. Waiting five seconds is still too long for any user."

Highlights from New Relic’s study include:
  • Chrome 13 on Mac offers the quickest overall browsing experience, loading web pages in just 2.4 seconds.
  • IE 9 outperforms Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox on Windows platforms, loading web pages in 3 seconds compared to Chrome and Firefox’s 3.5 second page load speeds.
  • In mobile speed tests, the fastest experience was delivered by BlackBerry Opera Mini at 2.6 seconds, twice as fast as Safari 5.1 on iPad, its closest competitor.
  • The global average for page load speed is 5.5 seconds, only a slight improvement from last year’s average of 6 seconds.

To view the full results of the study, visit: http://blog.newrelic.com/2012/04/05/fastest-browsers/

About Real User Monitoring

The data for the study was gathered using New Relic's Real User Monitoring (RUM), a technology that provides real-time data on user experience directly from the browser. The data was compiled on March 22, 2012 between the hours of 12 noon and 3 pm PT, at which time New Relic monitored an average of 694,000 page views per minute. New Relic monitors over 5 billion page loads each week, across 20,000 active accounts.

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About New Relic

As a leader in observability, New Relic empowers engineers with a data-driven approach to planning, building, deploying, and running great software. New Relic delivers the only unified data platform that empowers engineers to get all telemetry—metrics, events, logs, and traces—paired with powerful full stack analysis tools to help engineers do their best work with data, not opinions. Delivered through the industry’s first usage-based consumption pricing that’s intuitive and predictable, New Relic gives engineers more value for the money by helping improve planning cycle times, change failure rates, release frequency, and mean time to resolution. This helps the world’s leading brands including adidas Runtastic, American Red Cross, Australia Post, Banco Inter, Chegg, GoTo Group, Ryanair, Sainsbury’s, Signify Health, TopGolf, and World Fuel Services (WFS) improve uptime, reliability, and operational efficiency to deliver exceptional customer experiences that fuel innovation and growth. www.newrelic.com.

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