Yesterday on the Exploring IE Blog Ryan Gavin wrote about the continued growth of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta since it was released just over two weeks ago.
He revealed that the beta has now been downloaded over 6 million times and already has a 0.25% usage share across the web.
The real testament to its growth is the use it is seeing on various tech websites:
The tech enthusiast community is observing a notable increase in IE9 activity: LiveSide reported IE9 Beta users accounted for 25% of their reader base, IE9 overtook IE6 users at DownloadSquad, and Network World reported poll results showing 47% of people intend to try IE9 Beta. Additionally, we saw tweets from the likes of Ed Bott who noticed, “Halfway through Day 1 of IE9 availability, 8% of my ZDNet visitors are using the beta. Steady increase all day, higher than IE7.”
Even here on WindowsObserver.com we saw IE9 take over third place from IE6 in the first 5 days after it was released.
The popularity of IE9 is also not dampening the continued growth of IE8 but it is having a desired impact in the decline of older IE browser usage:
Following earlier trends, IE8 continued its growth this month, making our browser usage share growth 0.57% for our current offerings (IE8 and IE9) in September. We are pleased to report that customers are choosing more modern browsers, as evident by the continued decline of IE6 and IE7 usage (drops of 0.63% and 0.50% respectively in September according to Net Applications). This is goodness for the industry as a whole.
Let me close by saying something I have said before. Everyone has their preference for an Internet browser and I am fine with that. The bottom line is folks must pick a modern browser to replace the older, vulnerable browsers that are out there on all platforms from all browser developers.
The quicker they are put out of business the safer everyone’s overall browsing experience will be. Do your part and upgrade today!
