Maxthon Sets Its Pace for the Long Run in Europe's Race of the Internet Browsers

BEIJING, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Jeff Chen, CEO of Maxthon International, would have made a good jockey.

http://blog.maxthon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/0.jpg (Jeff Chen speaking at the opening of Maxthon's R&D organization last year in Beijing.)

"We've only had legal horse racing in China for a couple of years, but any good rider knows what counts is not who's first out of the starting gate. What matters is who's first over the finish line," Chen said in an interview just before the so-called browser ballot began appearing on European computer screens, giving users the chance to ditch Microsoft Internet Explorer in favor of one or many of its rivals.

One of those rivals is Maxthon, a Windows browser that's in the No. 2 spot in China.

And its among the 12 browsers selected to be on the European ballot, which is Microsoft's way of getting out of anti-trust trouble in the European Union.

http://blog.maxthon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/1.jpg (The browser choice screen as it will be seen initially by Europe's Windows users.)

The agreement between Microsoft and the European Council calls for the five browsers that are currently most popular in Europe to be displayed in random order on the part of the Web ballot that first greets user. The remaining seven browsers are lurking, in random order, just to the right but may be seen only if the user figures out the need to slide the little horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the screen.

http://blog.maxthon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/2.jpg (The browser choice screen as it will be seen by European Windows users who figure out the need to move the horizontal scroll bar (arrow).)

Beginning March 1 the browser choice screen will appear during a five-month roll-out as an automatic download through Windows Update for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. This may come as a surprise to most users who, one British poll revealed, know nothing about the browser brouhaha. But it's estimated that initially 170 million PC users will be confronted with not just the choice of which browser to use, but the necessity to choose to install one, two or all 12 of the browsers if they ever want to see their Internet again.

But the race Maxthon's Chen is running is the full five years that the choice screen will be popping up all over Europe, eventually influencing the browser preferences of an estimated 300 million computer users at the finish line. He's putting his money on the fact that Maxthon's wealth of powerful, easy-to-use features, speed, and versatility will put his browser in the lead pack by the end of the race.

Maxthon has already had more than 300 million downloads of its software, and it expects to hit 400 million sometime this year. That growth has come with virtually no advertising, but a lot of passionate word-of-mouth from users and reviewers. This year, however, Chen and other Maxthon representatives will talk up the browser with journalists, bloggers and others identified as opinion influencers in Europe. The company will be using some modest advertising, nothing like Google's Chrome media blitz, to pump up name recognition, and Maxthon has premiered a take-off of the "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC" commercials as the first of several planned YouTube videos for The Maxthon Internet Theater. (http://www.youtube.com/maxthontheater )

Later this year Maxthon will launch the third version of the browser, which Chen says will combine the best abilities of Maxthon 2 and its competitors -- making it the first browser to automatically switch display modes to show older Web pages designed for Internet Explorer standards and to show newer pages that Chrome and Safari are designed to display.

Chen's race strategy is to gain what are now the fractions of a percentage point needed to overtake the fifth-place browser, Opera. Every six months the rankings of the browsers will be recalculated and the five with the highest shares of users will be shuffled onto the premier display space.

That's why Chen likes to boast, "We're No. 6! And we're proud to be No. 6!"

Of course, that's for now.

Attention European Editors and Bloggers: If you would like to be on Maxthon's European Press Tour, email Ron White, [email protected].

    For more information, please contact:

    Media Contacts:

     Western Hemisphere
     Ron White
     Tel:   +1-210-683-1444
     Email: [email protected]
     Web:   http://twitter.com/Maxthonguy

     Eastern Hemisphere:
     firs73 a.k.a Selena
     Email: [email protected]
     Web:   http://twitter.com/firs73

SOURCE Maxthon