Maxthon is apparently becoming a very popular browser in China says CNet. It is available as a free download and will use proxies to prevent users from receiving filtered content from search engines like Google and Yahoo. Here are the statistics that CNet has received:
So far, about 60 million people have downloaded the browser since its launch in 2003. According to Maxthon research, about 14 percent of the Chinese Web population has used the browser and 17 percent employs it for Web search.
I am sure that the browser is really dedicated to Chinese users because the developers are based in Beijing. Even in the United States Maxthon has become very popular because it is IE-based but includes tabbed-browsing, which is a feature that Microsoft will be releasing in the future with Internet Explorer 7. Since it is based on Internet Explorer it allows users to stop worrying that they will come across Web pages that are incompatible or don’t display correctly.
And as it’s based on IE it also renders pages incorrectly and has security holes. If people want tabbed browsing they would be better off with IE 7 Beta. It’s stable and probably more secure than a third party app that uses the IE engine. Or FireFox. I’ve heard that’s good too