Internet Explorer 9 Approaching 10% Usage Share on Windows 7

This month’s share report from Net Applications continues to show some great momentum around Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7, with share about to pass 10% for the last day in April. We’re excited about that. But the share numbers also give us a great opportunity to reiterate what matters most to us in building Internet Explorer: that the web experiences we all enjoy are getting better. With the growth of Internet users worldwide more people are enjoying the web through Internet Explorer and Windows than ever before. For Windows 7 customers, the best browser for experiencing the web is IE9. As we mentioned last month, we built IE9 to help developers unleash faster and richer web experiences that can take full advantage of the capabilities of Windows 7 and modern PC hardware. So for us, success means that we have real sites and developers taking advantage of those unique capabilities to deliver that better web experience.

In the beginning of March, we launched the Dev Unplugged contest as a way to tap into the community of developers who are at the forefront of gaming and music on the Web to share their work with a broader audience. Over 2800 developers have registered for the contest, and the task of judging their work has attracted some of the top minds from the web community.

JoyBits, one of the companies participating in Dev Unplugged, took the time to talk to us about their experience building Doodle God.  This amazing brain-teaser site is based on HTML5 and at present has over 25 million fans. When Joybits tells us that Doodle God runs 400% faster on IE9, it’s a clear signal that not only are developers aware of the differences that come with taking advantage of hardware acceleration through Windows 7, but they are emboldened to continue to push the boundaries of what they can create. Listen for yourself with a little video chat conversation with JoyBits co-founder, Sergio Manucharian.

In terms of users enjoying these new experiences - just six weeks after the launch of Internet Explorer 9 we are about to reach a new milestone, as of the last day in April, IE9 is at 9.95% usage share worldwide on Windows 7. For the entire month this averages 7.5% usage share on Windows 7– doubling the usage share number of 3.6% in March. With Windows 7 selling more than 350 million licenses in the 18 months since its release, more and more people every day are enjoying better web experiences with Windows 7 and IE9.

Developers will also be pleased to hear that we are continuing to see more and more people upgrade to a modern browser with the share of IE6 and IE7 worldwide dropping another 0.7% in April. Our new website ie6countdown.com has had 54,000 tweets since its launch in March and continues to get new supporters worldwide. We now have 530 partners like iStockphoto and Edmodo who are helping to get people to move to a modern browser. Thank you!

If you haven’t already made the move to Internet Explorer 9, try it by visiting www.beautyoftheweb.com.

Ryan Gavin
Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing