AptiQuant bears brunt of 'angry' IE users

A Canadian firm that claimed Internet Explorer users had low IQs has allegedly received hate mail and been threatened with a lawsuit by angry users of Microsoft's browser.

AptiQuant chief executive Leonard Howard said overnight he was unconcerned by the lawsuit, but he sought to clarify the firm's controversial survey conclusion.

“I just want to make it clear that the report released by my company did not suggest that if you use IE that means you have a low IQ, but what it really says is that if you have a low IQ then there are high chances that you use Internet Explorer,” Howard said.

The firm administered intelligence quotient tests to 100,000 internet users over a month.

"A significant number of individuals with a low score on the cognitive test were found to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) versions 6.0 to 9.0,” its report read.

“There was no significant difference in the IQ scores between individuals using Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari; however, it was on an average higher than IE users.”

Opera users were found to have the highest IQ, followed by those running Camino.

Howard said he was "surprised" by the level of attention the survey had received.