Internet Explorer 9 tops two million downloads in first day

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) has been downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours, according to the firm.

The browser, which was only released on Monday, was downloaded 27 times every second, wrote Ryan Gavin, senior director for Internet Explorer, in a blog post.

"Internet Explorer 9 has now been downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours since its Monday night release. That is over 27 downloads every second, or over 240 downloads every nine seconds. Wow," he wrote.

"We want to thank everyone around the world for downloading IE9 and the enthusiastic reception. Some 2.3 million downloads in 24 hours is over double the 1 million downloads we saw of the IE9 Beta and four times that of the IE9 RC over the same time period."

IE9 appears to have had a good reception from users since its launch at the South by South West event in the US, but just how far this will go to clawing back market share from rivals remains to be seen.

In 2008, Microsoft was dominating the browser market and had almost 70 per cent of internet users running its software. However, since then, the release of Google Chrome and the increasing presence of Mozilla's Firefox have had a considerable impact.

In October 2010 StatCounter reported that IE's market share had fallen below 50 per cent for the first time, while Firefox had around a third.

Importantly, Microsoft also suffered at the hands of a European ruling that said that IE could no longer be installed as the default browser on new computers.

Instead buyers of new Windows machines are now offered a choice in a browser ballot.

IE9 does not run on Windows XP machines either, meaning that it is an unlikely choice for enterprise users.