Firefox 4 Snags About 5 Million Downloads In 24 Hrs

Surpassing the 2.35 million obtained by Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4 seems to have had a successful debut, going past the five million milestone since debuting Tuesday.    Wednesday, March 23, 2011:  Mozilla Firefox 4, which was launched yesterday, has already taken 1.95 per cent 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 per cent of the worldwide market. When all versions of each browser are taken into account, Internet Explorer still leads the global market with 45 per cent followed by Firefox with 30 per cent and Chrome with 17 per cent. In the US, IE (all versions combined) leads the market with 48 per cent followed by Firefox on 26 per cent and Chrome on 14 per cent. On a monthly basis, StatCounter figures show a steady decline in the IE global market share from 55 per cent in February last year to 45 per cent this year. In the same time frame Google's Chrome has risen steadily from 7 per cent worldwide to 17 per cent. 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.