Less than One Week After Launch Firefox 4 Has a Close to 4 Percent Market Share

Firefox 4 is continuing to raise the interest of millions of users as many upgrade from previous versions or switch from other browsers to check out the new contender. It has close to 40 million downloads at this point, in less than a week since launch.

But even more relevant than downloads is actual usage and this has surged as well. Already, Firefox 4 has a close to 4 percent market share, closing in on Safari 5 and already getting close to the total market share of Google Chrome.

For a browser launched six days ago, that's an impressive feat. Of course, it's not that big of a surprise considering that Firefox is the second most popular browser on the planet.

And, since Firefox 4 was pushed through the update notification system, many Firefox 3.6 users have traded in the old model for a new one. And the number of people already using Firefox 4 is starting to be mirrored in the data coming from analytics companies.

Both Net Applications and Statcounter show a big increase in Firefox 4 numbers after launch. Net Applications indicates that already, 3.74 percent of the browsers hitting the pages it monitors are Firefox 4.

Statcounter is even more optimistic showing that 5.14 percent of its visitors are now running Firefox 4.

"Firefox 4's release kicked off with considerably more excitement and momentum," Mozilla's Asa Dotzler writes referring to the stats provided by the analytics companies.

"IE 9's release, which was backed by one of Microsoft's biggest launch marketing campaigns in recent history, had a comparatively weak showing," Dotzler continues.

"So what explains this disparity? It's you all. It's every one of you that downloaded Firefox 4, found it to be awesome, and told all of your friends and family about it. No ad campaign from Microsoft can top that," he adds.

If the trend continues, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and soon enough Google Chrome 10 will be overtaken. While the download rate should be slowing down, it will continue to be high until most Firefox users will have upgraded.