Firefox 4 Hits the Ground Running and Eclipses Internet Explorer 9

Boston, USA & Dublin, Ireland; Wednesday, 23rd March 2011: Mozilla Firefox 4, which was launched yesterday (Tuesday 22nd March), has already taken 1.95% of the worldwide Internet browser market according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that on the first day of its release Firefox 4 scored higher globally than Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 9 which was launched more than a week ago.*

"Firefox 4 has really hit the ground running and has eclipsed the launch of IE 9," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "Although IE 9 has undoubtedly been hampered by its lack of compatibility with Windows XP." By yesterday IE 9 had taken just 0.87% of the worldwide market.

When all versions of each browser are taken in to account, Internet Explorer still leads the global market with 45% followed by Firefox with 30% and Chrome with 17%. In the US, IE (all versions combined) leads the market with 48% followed by Firefox on 26% and Chrome on 14%.

On a monthly basis, StatCounter figures show a steady decline in the IE global market share from 55% in February last year to 45% this year. In the same time frame Google's Chrome has risen steadily from 7% worldwide to 17%.

StatCounter recently reported that Firefox overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to become the number one browser in Europe for the first time in December 2010.

StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) from the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

StatCounter, which provides free website stats, publishes browser version stats via StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool. It also monitors other Internet market share battles including Social Media.

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* IE 9 and Firefox 4 were both available for beta testing prior to their respective launch dates

Press queries to: Kerri Crowley, Simpson Financial & Technology PR

T: +353 1 260 5300 or E: kerri@simpsonftpr.ie

For individual country analysis go to:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-daily-20110322-20110322-bar

Further information on our analysis is available at:

http://gs.statcounter.com/faq

About StatCounter

StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit http://statcounter.com.