Posts Tagged ‘Mozilla Firefox’

Firefox 4 breaks its predecessor’s first 24-hr download record

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

The pent-up demand arising from the delay of its launch from November last year has resulted in a whopping 8.75 million downloads in the first 24-hours following its launch earlier this week on March 22.

It easily trounced the 2.35 million downloads that Internet Explorer 9 garnered in the first 24-hours of its launch just a week prior.

Firefox 4 is downloaded 8.75 times within first 24 hours

The number of Firefox 4 downloads in the first 24 hours surpassed the previous record set by Firefox 3 when the predecessor captured a cool 8 million downloads during the first 24 hours after its launch in June 2008.
Firefox 4 is available on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It supports Windows XP while IE9 doesn’t. Many observers see that as the main reason why it has drawn more than 3 times the number of downloads that IE9 recorded in its first 24 hours.

Windows XP accounts for more than 61 percent of all windows-based machines that went online in February, according to web metrics firm Net Applications.

While Mozilla has chided Microsoft for leaving Windows XP users stuck with the two-and-a-half year old IE8, the latter supports only Windows 7, Vista and Windows Server based PCs because it wants to leverage the more advanced technology available in these newer operating systems and does not want IE9 to be constrained by the older technology in 10-year-old Windows XP.

In the meantime, visit http://glow.mozilla.org/ for a live status of the number of Firefox 4 downloads worldwide.

And for some statistics of the market share of the various browsers, checkout this wikipedia page. Below are some download statistics updated from my earlier posting for the IE9 launch:

Browser/
App/
Plug-in
Claimed downloads Time period Launch Date
Mozilla Firefox 4.0 8.75 1 day Mar 2011
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 8 million 1 day Jun 2008
Opera 11 6.7 million 1 day Dec 2010
IE 9 2.35 million 1 day Mar 2011
Apple Safari 4.0 6 million 3 days Jun 2009
IE9 beta 2 million 2 days Sep 2010
IE8 beta 1.3 million 5 days Aug 2008
Angry Birds 5 million 1 month Dec 2010
Mac App Store 1 million 1 day Jan 2011
Nokia Ovi 3 million Daily Ongoing
Adobe Flash Player 8 million Daily Ongoing

Launch of Mozilla FireFox 4

Monday, March 21st, 2011

The next major release for the popular browser from Mozilla will be launched tomorrow.

Firefox 4 from MozillaBased on the final beta – Release Candidate 2 – that became available only three days ago on 18 March, Mozilla has announced that this will be the last update where the delta from the previous release is a large one.

Future releases will be more frequent and involve smaller changes. This is in line with other browsers which releases minor updates on a more frequent basis.

The main enhancements involve better standards support, improvements in performance, and a face-lifted user interface.

The current version is at 3.6.

IE9 downloads vs the rest of the world

Friday, March 18th, 2011
Microsoft has claimed that Internet Explorer 9 has been downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours since its official release on Monday night. This ranks it behind Firefox and Opera but ahead of Safari.

Mozilla Firefox 3 was fastest off the block when it clocked 8 million downloads in the first 24 hours after its launch in June 2008. Next was Opera 11 with 6.7 million downloads in the first day after launch in December 2010.

Both browsers were ahead of Internet Explorer 9 in terms of number of downloads in the first 24 hours.

Following behind was Apple’s Safari which reached 6 million downloads but only after three days. Data for Chrome were unavailable.

The above statistics were compiled by Gavin Clarke of The Register and based on claims by the companies themselves without any means of external verification.

I have summarised the compilation below. Also included are downloads statistics for Angry Birds, the Mac App Store, Nokia Ovi store and the all-time-favourite – Adobe Flash Player.

Browser/
App/
Plug-in
Claimed downloads Time period Launch Date
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 8 million 1 day Jun 2008
Opera 11 6.7 million 1 day Dec 2010
IE 9 2.35 million 1 day 14 Mar 2011
Apple Safari 4.0 6 million 3 days Jun 2009
IE9 beta 2 million 2 days Sep 2010
IE8 beta 1.3 million 5 days Aug 2008
Angry Birds 5 million 1 month Dec 2010
Mac App Store 1 million 1 day Jan 2011
Nokia Ovi 3 million Daily Ongoing
Adobe Flash Player 8 million Daily Ongoing