Firefox 4 Becomes Leading Firefox Version

Boston, USA & Dublin, Ireland; Wednesday, 1st June 2011: Mozilla's Firefox 4 reached 14.2% of the worldwide market in May, overtaking for the first time its previous 3.6 version which is on 12.3%, according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that following its launch on March 22nd Firefox 4 has overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9.0 which is on 4.6% globally and is just behind Google's Chrome 11 which has 16%.

"Firefox 4 has performed well since launch and is on an upward trajectory," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "This is particularly impressive as a Firefox upgrade has to be initiated or authorized by the user, unlike Chrome, for example, which undergoes automatic updates."

When all versions are combined IE still leads the pack globally with 43.9% followed by Firefox with 29.3%. The forward momentum, however, is with Chrome which has increased from 8.6% a year ago to 19.4% in May 2011.

In the USA Firefox 4 is on 12.6% compared to 10.7% for Firefox 3.6 while IE 9 is on 5.9%. Aodhan Cullen added that IE 9 is restricted by the fact that it only runs on Windows 7 and Vista and not on XP, the worldwide market leader. When all browser versions are taken into account IE leads the US market with 47% followed by Firefox on 25% and Chrome on 15%.

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 traffic analysis, 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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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.