Firefox 4 had 109,470,505 downloads as of Tuesday morning (ET) in just a month after it was introduced.

Industry analysts confirm there has been a lot of interest in Firefox 4 even in its early hours of availability. TechZone360 reported that some 1 million copies of the new browser were downloaded by users in its first three hours of availability.

In reviewing the numbers, Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's community coordinator for Firefox, noted in a recent blog post it was interesting to compare Firefox 4 vs. Internet Explorer 9 in early usage.

“Firefox 4 is already well above the 8 percent mark while IE 9, is right around 3 percent,” Dotzler said.

But even with that impressive number of downloads since the March 22 launch, Computerworld reports that Firefox 4 has not upped Mozilla's “overall share of the browser market.”

Firefox 4's average share for the one-month period was 7.3 percent, Computerworld reports. That is over double the average share for March, Computerworld said. And the share went over 8 percent in the four days before Monday.

Yet, the number of downloads did not change Mozilla's total usage share, Computerworld said.

“StatCounter's data has Firefox – all editions, including Version 4 – down three-tenths of a percentage point so far this month, consistent with the steady decline the browser has suffered since last fall,” Computerworld said.

Firefox 3.6 users have yet to be offered upgrades to Version 4. That will start on May 3.

“All of Firefox 4's gains can be attributed to current users upgrading on their own,” Computerworld said.

TechZone360 points out that among the features found on Firefox 4 are:

* A new tab manager, called “Panorama.”

* An interface which is similar to the minimal design of Chrome.

* GPU acceleration to increase page composition speed.

In addition, TechZone360 reported that Firefox 4 has such new features a JavaScript engine and bookmark syncing. The browser also has an updated plug-in architecture (called JetPack) and comprehensive support for HTML5.

Similar to IE 9, Firefox 4 comes loaded with a “do not track” feature that is designed to ensure Web surfing privacy, TechZone360 said.

Firefox is available in over 70 languages. For downloading, please click here.



Ed Silverstein is a TechZone360 contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell