One question we get asked a lot about our Webtype service is “what percentage of browsers support web fonts?”
Our answer: As of September 2010, 95.6% of desktop browsers have support for web fonts. This is based on statistics maintained at w3schools.com which we analyzed according to the version numbers that support web fonts. Here is a visual breakdown:
Webtype automatically delivers the appropriate web font files and optimized CSS for each of the browsers that supports web fonts, and allows designers to specify fallback fonts for the 4.4% that don’t.
Luckily, the percentage of browsers with no support continues to decrease as users upgrade to newer software.
As for mobile devices: the Mobile Safari browser – which is used on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – and the Android 2.2 mobile browser support web fonts. For other mobile browsers, there has been a slower adoption rate though. In those cases, the system fallback fonts will continue to be used. As new versions of mobile browsers adopt web fonts, Webtype will automatically support them.
