Firefox 4 Tops 100 Million Downloads

It has been a month since the launch of Firefox 4 and Mozilla has decided to disclose that the browser has already managed 100 million downloads. Nevertheless, according to StatCounter, a web analytics company, the introduction of Firefox 4 has not managed to boost Firefox’s overall share in the browser market.

Firefox 4’s average share up until the 24th of April accumulated to 7.3% which is more than double the average Firefox 4 had achieved in March. The Mozilla browser has since exceeded 8%.

StatCounter, however, also shows that all editions of Firefox, including the newest iteration, dropped by 0.30%, thus indicating that even the launch of Firefox 4 hasn’t been able to cease the steady decline the browser has seen since last autumn.

Still, a glint of hope remains as Mozilla has not yet offered users of Firefox 3.6 the upgrade to Firefox 4. Said users will see such an offer starting from the 3rd of May, depicting that all current users of Firefox 4 updated on their own accord.

Much in the same spirit that market share for the newest Mozilla browser increased, Firefox 3.6’s market share fell, going from 24% in March to 19.2% in April, a loss that was almost as high as Firefox 4’s gain.

Internet Explorer 9, on the other hand, was portrayed by StatCounter much in the same fashion as Firefox 4. All versions of Internet Explorer collectively decreased by 0.50%, while IE9 by itself managed to climb above 3%. Firefox 4’s more significant gains can be attributed to the browser running on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows XP, the latter of which still being the most used Windows platform. IE9 supports none of these operating systems. This is likely why Microsoft has argued only to use Windows Vista and Windows 7 when comparing browser market share that includes IE9.

Firefox 4's market share has gone past 8% since its launch, while IE9 has just cleared 3%.