Upgrade offer boosts Firefox 4 share by 30%

Mozilla coordinator boasts 'IE9 will never catch up'

Computerworld - Firefox 4's share shot up 11% the first day after Mozilla started offering users the upgrade last week, and climbed 30% in four days.

The boost moved a long-time Mozilla employee to compare the gains of Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) since the two browsers debuted last March.

"IE9 will never catch up to Firefox," said Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's community coordinator for Firefox marketing, on his personal blog. "It will be a year or two before [Microsoft] can move the bulk of their IE7 and IE8 users forward."

According to Irish Web metrics company StatCounter, Firefox 4 usage share jumped from 10.3% to 11.4% on the day after Mozilla began asking existing users if they wanted to upgrade to the new edition. The 1.1-point gain represented an 11% increase.

By Monday, Firefox 4 accounted for 13.2% of all browsers, a 30% increase from the previous Thursday.     Read More