14 DAY TRIAL // With the release of Maxthon 2.0 earlier this summer the browser has literally exploded on the European and US markets. But in Everest's homeland the application is already a household name. From its initial release in 2003 no less than 60 million users have downloaded the browser. China's Internet market analysts estimate that more than 14% of all Chinese users have come in contact with Maxthon.
Built on the rendering engine of Internet Explorer, Maxthon is in many regards a tweak of Microsoft's product, this aspect removing it from the direct competition with the Redmond Company's browser. A particular functionality has made Maxthon very attractive for Chinese users, and this is an integrated option to filter traffic through a Web proxy and go around the Chinese government censure imposer on the search engines on the market.
Internet Explorer has been losing more and more of its 85% global share in the browser market usage. Maxthon joins with the traditional competitors of Microsoft's application like: Opera, Firefox, Netscape and others in the fight to attract consumer preference. The fact that it uses IE as a rendering engine can only be an advantage in this context.
"The advent of broadband, and technologies like AJAX and RSS are redefining the role of the browser from a dumb reader to a single point of customization for users," said William Tai, an investor in the Maxthon Company. "The first click is the browser; it's the instrument panel to the Web."