Firefox 4 has got off to a strong start with 5.0 million copies of the new browser downloaded.

It seems that Firefox 4 easily beat Microsoft's claim that users downloaded 2.4 million copies of its Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in the first 24 hours of availability last week. According to Mozilla most of the downloads were in Europe with more than 2.6 million downloads, closely followed by North America with 1.6 million.

Mozilla executive Mike Beltzner said that it was behind the launch numbers of Firefox 3.6, which shipped in January 2010. During the first three hours, downloads averaged between 5,000 and 6,000 copies per minute, less than half the 12,000-per-minute pace of the previous version.