IE9 bucks the trend of older Microsoft browsers at weekends

• Web analytics firm research suggests acceptance of IE9 by home users

Boston, USA & Dublin, Ireland; Tuesday, 8th May 2012: Microsoft's latest browser IE9 is performing strongly at the weekend according to StatCounter, the independent website analytics company. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that, while total IE usage dips, IE9 usage peaks at weekends.

Commenting, Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter said, "We have previously noted that Google's Chrome peaks at the weekend at the expense of IE. This seems to suggest that many home (as opposed to business) users prefer Chrome to IE. However, having drilled down further into our data, we have released a new statistic which allows the comparison of Chrome (all versions combined)* with the individual versions of other browsers. This shows that while IE6, 7 and 8 usage falls off at the weekend, IE9 spikes. This indicates that IE9 is bucking the trend of previous IE versions and is gaining home user traction."

The weekend trend towards both Chrome and IE9 peaking is repeated across US and UK users.

StatCounter data is based on over 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US; 850 million from the UK) to the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

Apart from its research arm, StatCounter provides free website traffic analysis. This allows website owners to capture valuable intelligence on their site in real time.

Ends

Press queries:
For interview with Aodhan Cullen or other press queries please contact:
Naomi McElroy, Simpson Financial & Technology PR
T: + 353 1 260 5300 or E: naomi@simpsonftpr.ie

* Google uses an automated update process for Chrome and rapidly releases new versions without requirement for user action. This release process ensures that all Chrome users are transitioned to newly released versions within a very short timeframe. Another consequence of this release process is that our "Browser Version" graphs can become clogged with several versions of Chrome over a short period. This forces some older browser versions off our graphs and makes it difficult to conduct analysis of browser version trends. We have released a new statistic Browser Version (Partially Combined) to allow the comparison of Chrome (all versions combined) with other browser versions which are released in a more traditional manner.

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