Microsoft IE 8 Launch 'Underwhelms'

New York and Dublin, Friday, March 20, 2009: There has been limited take up to date of Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 8 according to research by StatCounter which provides free website traffic statistics. According to StatCounter Global Stats global usage in the first day of launch (March 19) was 1.39%. This is just above its previous day's market penetration of 1.33%. The new browser has been in public beta testing for about a year. By 20th March 17:00 GMT IE 8 market share had risen to 1.56%.

"I suppose the kindest description of user reaction to IE 8's first public outing would be 'underwhelming'," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter.

He contrasted the performance to the launch of Firefox 3 last June. "Firefox 3 managed to convert users from its previous browser. Usage of Firefox 3 more than doubled from 7.8% at beta testing to 18.9% over a three day period following the launch (June 16-18)."

StatCounter is one of the largest website traffic monitoring companies in the world with over two million members globally. Over 40% are located in the US with 25% in Europe. Its analysis is based on four billion pageloads per month.

To follow how IE 8 is performing go to: (http://gs.statcounter.com/).

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About StatCounter

StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features.

StatCounter currently has over two million members and tracks in excess of ten billion pageloads per month over its network of three million websites. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit www.statcounter.com