In just five days, Firefox 4 more than doubles IE9's market share

[Emil]

Net Applications has released Daily Tracking tools to watch how IE9 and Firefox 4 capture market share in the early days after their launch. The data clearly shows that the latter has already quickly pulled ahead of the former.

Internet Explorer 9 was released on March 15, 2011. On that day, it had 0.88 percent market share. Firefox 4 was released on March 21, 2011. On that day, it had 1.40 percent market share.

On March 26, 2011, IE9 had 1.57 percent market share while Firefox 4 had 3.66 percent market share. In other words, Firefox 4 already has more than double the market share of IE9.

In their respective first 24 hours, IE9 saw 2.35 million downloads and Firefox 4 saw 7.1 million downloads. Download numbers don't necessarily correlate to usage, and while this is certainly true, we now know that Mozilla's latest and greatest is speeding ahead of Microsoft's best browser to date.

Microsoft still has one more trick up its sleeve. The software giant is able to push new versions of IE through the Automatic Updates function of Windows Update. The company will likely see quite a jump in market share when it flips that switch.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/43011-in-just-five-days-firefox-4-more-than-doubles-ie9s-market-share.html

 

[Ahmed90]

ofc firefox is the browsers king of customization

it only take few minutes for one time setup on the fly and you get your own browser the way you like it

 

[Guest]

Yeah Microsoft's new browser i nice but without Ad On support and customizations it will never gain any more market share. Firefox with Adblock is a great combination. I tried IE's new Tracking Protection but for some reason it doesn't really seem to be blocking any ads. I will just stick with FF and have IE as backup if ever needed.

 

[treeski]

Guest said:
I tried IE's new Tracking Protection but for some reason it doesn't really seem to be blocking any ads. I will just stick with FF and have IE as backup if ever needed.

I was under the impression that ie's tracking protection simply prevents websites from tracking your web activity, instead of blocking ads entirely. This should be working if you notice that ads aren't tailored to reflect your web history, essentially. Either way, add-on support is definitely preventing ie9 from becoming a primary browser for me. Still though, chrome>ie9>ff4>others for me.

 

[treeski]

Anyone know if newly bought copies of win7 ship with ie9 instead of ie8?

 

[Emil]

treeski said:
Anyone know if newly bought copies of win7 ship with ie9 instead of ie8?

No they don't.

 

[Rick]

This could be explained as simply as: Firefox users (read: tech savvy people) are more than twice as likely to upgrade to new versions than in Internet Explorer users (read: general populace)

Statistically, I think this is unimportant.

 

[gobbybobby]

I am running and posting with Firefox 4.0. \0/

 

[Cota]

A cake for Microsoft would be nice now, "Congratulations on keeping IE9 alive" and a sacrifice too

 

[Guest]

you all do realize that IE9 hasnt been pushed out in Windows update right...

 

[MrAnderson]

Easy to explain... the upgrade process is way easier. It is very similar to Google Chrome, except Chrome seems to just upgrade and bypass even the Vista user thingie that makes you hit Okay for everything. MS should setup the same kind of system in the browser. But oh for fear of getting the monopoly hounds... probably more in the UK than anywhere else...


Also, a lot has been built on the oerceived stability of IE8 and people are not too quick to rock that boat! For me Firefox is a nice browser, but I use FF, Chrome, as alternate browsers when IE is doing something wrong.

I do have to admit, I see now why the Firefox people are trying to crap all over Adobe Flash. Flash is not stable in Firefox, and you know what that is okay, but what I find not exceptable is that Firefox Crashed so hard I had to reboot my computer as I could not get back any semblance of control - No task manager, the mouse would move but nothing could be clicked. I could not task switch... that is not exceptable for a "modern" browser.

WHen IE crashes it goes down... it does not take Windows for the ride.

 

[Rick]

MrAnderson said:
WHen IE crashes it goes down... it does not take Windows for the ride.

Did I die in my sleep last night? Is this the afterlife? Oh dear...

*rubs eyes and drinks some more coffee*

 

[Guest]

They can try to push whatever they want through windows update, i still have to double click the icon to open the application

The downloads numbers mean nothing, it is usage that counts most.

 

[Raswan]

Rick said:
This could be explained as simply as: Firefox users (read: tech savvy people) are more than twice as likely to upgrade to new versions than in Internet Explorer users (read: general populace)

Statistically, I think this is unimportant.

Good point.

 

[Guest]

I haven't upgraded yet. But, when I do it will be IE9. I have nothing but bad experiences with FireFox. It was an early version of FireFox. May be FireFox is much better now, but my first impressions on it was very bad.

 

[Whoaman]

The latest Firefox is excellent. IE9 runs well too but is currently a Windows only affair so unless you want to tie yourself rather needlessly to one-platform-only browser expertise than it's a no-brainer to choose Firefox or Chrome as your go-to browser. The figures were seeing represent this obvious realization.

Release IE9 on OSX and Linux (and perhaps iOS and Android) and Microsoft may have a winner. It would be a smart move because the browser really is the OS to many in their day-to-day and Microsoft are primarily a software company and should be a better OS-agnostic player. But Windows is still a cash cow for them and narrows their view somewhat so I won't hold my breathe.

 

[war59312]

As noted at the end of the article, Microsoft has not even pushed IE 9 out to windows update. It''s only been pushed out for beta and RC users.

So these numbers are total hogwash and mean nothing!

But this article speaks volumes about its author and this site. Firefox Lovers!!

 

[Whoaman]

war59312 said:
As noted at the end of the article, Microsoft has not even pushed IE 9 out to windows update. It''s only been pushed out for beta and RC users.

So these numbers are total hogwash and mean nothing!

Not so. Firefox doesn't force the updates upon users but just notifies them of the availability - upgrade is by choice. However, this is often not the case for Windows Update - we'll see if MS tries to force this upon unsuspecting Vista\Win7 users or not in the coming days.

 

[Emin3nce]

Firefox is becoming slow and chunky... i'm having more and more users complaining of slower startup times and pre-use "updates" taking forever to install. Definitely not a good business browser, we use Chrome.

 

[gwailo247]

After realizing that any site you go to has scripts running from up to 20 different sites, I pretty much don't go anywhere without my NoScript, and since neither Chrome nor IE9 have something that works as well, I'm sticking with FF for now.

IMO they're all basically the same now, just a matter of which plug ins or add ons you want.

 

[Archean]

Rick said:
This could be explained as simply as: Firefox users (read: tech savvy people) are more than twice as likely to upgrade to new versions than in Internet Explorer users (read: general populace)

Statistically, I think this is unimportant.

General tech savy of today are those who have never used or know anything about DOS days (that includes Win 1-3x); hence, I don't consider them tech savy at all because whenever something hard to troubleshoot pops up, they simply run to Mama and weep for hours.

Now, in real world there is hardly any noticeable performance difference between IE9 and FF4 or even Chrome; and I use both. But for lately I am starting to prefer IE9 more and more and FF4 is becoming an 'alternative' browser for me.

 

[foreverzero89]

opera is better for the tech savvy people. faster and lighter than FF, looks better, more customization than FF.

 

[Darth Shiv]

opera is better for the tech savvy people. faster and lighter than FF, looks better, more customization than FF.

Used to use it but it had trouble rendering some sites nicely. Moved on to firefox. After noscript and flashblock, I find other browsers irritating now. Or maybe internet standards are the real culprits because of the obnoxious stuff that can be done on websites.

If I do need a quick browser up, I've got chrome. Might have a look again at Opera but it seems very low key nowadays. Customizations? Wonder if they do them better.