Firefox 4 Off To Strong Start

Mozilla Firefox 4, has already grabbed 1.95 percent of the global Internet browser market since its launch yesterday, according to a new report from StatCounter.

StatCounter said on the first day of its release Firefox 4 scored higher worldwide than Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 which launched more than a week ago.

“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 data for all versions of each browser are calculated, Internet Explorer still leads the global market with 45 percent followed by Firefox with 30 percent and Chrome with 17 percent. In the U.S., IE (all versions combined) leads the market with 48 percent followed by Firefox 26 percent and Chrome 14 percent.

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.