As it stands, Chrome and Firefox both offer WebRTC browser support natively. Android devices can also utilize WebRTC-based technology. Safari and Internet Explorer have yet to adopt WebRTC browser support, but official ratification at the W3C and other industry pressures are pushing Apple and Microsoft ever closer to implementation. But the future of real-time, in-browser communications has never been in question. Microsoft, for instance, has been toying with its own variant of RTC for several years. So the question is not if RTC technology will be used, but rather how it will be implemented.
The current landscape suggests that Google’s open source WebRTC API will remain the lasting RTC implementation of choice. In the span of three years, WebRTC browser support has already been enabled on over 1 billion 1 devices, with a forecast of 6.2 billion 2 enabled devices by 2018. A rich and varied community of communications providers have already embraced the rising technology. At this point, it appears quite unlikely that a rival RTC candidate would disrupt and undo the progress and integration WebRTC has already achieved.
According to recent data, Chrome and Firefox account for 83.4% of all web browsers used on the Internet.3 WebRTC browser implementation is enabled in the latest version of these browsers, so it is likely that WebRTC capable browsers represent a fractional, but significant, component of this 83.4%. But the broader picture of is one of widespread adoption: with over eight tenths of the market cornered, Google and Mozilla have set the stage for near-mandatory usage. As users update their software over time, the proportion of WebRTC-enabled browsers will eventually saturate over 80% of the Internet.
Visit the following pages to find out more about each individual browser’s implementation of WebRTC. Discover the technical differences between the browsers, the history of their RTC endeavors, and the three overarching APIs that allow each browser to engage in real-time communications.