IE9 Beta Momentum in September – 6 Million Downloads

Internet Explorer 9 Beta made its debut earlier this month and was met with warm reception by our customers and partners.  As we have talked about previously, one of the ways we measure success for IE is through customers choosing our latest product offerings.  This month that means we get to expand our usage share conversation to include IE9 Beta.

Net Applications’ browser usage share report released today shows IE9 Beta usage share at 0.25% for the two weeks after launch. 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.”

Over the past few months we’ve discussed Internet Explorer 8’s prominence worldwide. 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. 

Two weeks after IE9 Beta launch, we continue to see great reactions from our customers.  As of today, IE9 Beta has been downloaded 6 million times, which is two and half times what we saw with IE8 Beta in a similar timeframe.  Plus, a great many users are researching and testing the new features in IE9 with over 30 million page views to the Beauty of the Web site.

We look forward to seeing more and more people enjoy a beautiful web with IE9.

Ryan Gavin

Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing

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[hwp]

I downloaded IE Beta a few days ago and soon ran into two problems. One was that I was no longer able to post on one of my favourite forums. The other was that I was unable to open some web sites and links to those websites. I subsequently uninstalled IE9 and reverted to IE8 and all is well again. As has been noted elsewhere, uninstalling IE9 is a little tricky. IE9 does not appear in the list of Programs accessed from the Control Panel but rather is found in the list of Microsoft Updates accessed from a heading on the left sidebar of the Program listing page.

 

[Patonb]

Its ecause the sites aren't compatible with the new web styles that ie9 defaults with.

You just need to click the compatibility button that was in the browser address bar.