IE9 Usage Doubles on Windows 7 in the Past Month

Internet Explorer 9 will soon pass the 10% usage share on Windows 7, considering the latest iteration of IE’s growth since launch in mid-March 2011. The Redmond company recently announced that over 350 million Windows 7 licenses were sold in the first 18 months since launch, and that sales continue to be strong for the operating system launched in late 2009.

Windows 7’s momentum can only push IE9 adoption up, especially with the browser being served automatically through Windows Update to users worldwide.

Customers still have to give green light to the IE8 to IE9 upgrades themselves as the browser will not install automatically on their machine.

“In terms of users enjoying these new experiences - just six weeks after the launch of Internet Explorer 9 we are about to reach a new milestone, as of the last day in April, IE9 is at 9.95% usage share worldwide on Windows 7,” said Ryan Gavin, senior director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing.

“For the entire month this averages 7.5% usage share on Windows 7– doubling the usage share number of 3.6% in March. With Windows 7 selling more than 350 million licenses in the 18 months since its release, more and more people every day are enjoying better web experiences with Windows 7 and IE9.”

With a usage share of 7.46%, IE9 has climbed to the fifth position in the top browser used worldwide on Windows 7, after IE8 with 47.54%, Chrome 10.0 with 14.75%, Firefox 3.6 with 14.07% and Firefox 4.0 with 8.40%.

Despite the fact that Mozilla claims in excess of 126 million downloads of Firefox 4.0, the latest version of the open source browser has a usage share that’s larger than IE9’s by just 0.9.

Provided that IE9’s momentum will continue to hold steady, the browser will outpace Firefox 4.0 on Windows 7 this month.

Taking all operating systems into consideration and not just Windows 7, usage share statistics are as follows: IE8 33.06%, Firefox 3.6 13.52%, IE6.0 10.85%, Chrome 10.0 9.91%, IE7.0 7.35%, Firefox 4.0 5.43%, Safari 5.0 4.55% and Internet Explorer 9.0 2.41%.

Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) Platform Preview 1 (PP1) is available for download here.

Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 is available for download here.