According to a tweet by the Indian Microsoft development account, the final release of Internet Explorer 9 will be landing on 24 March.

The tweet, that has since been removed, stated that the launch will take place during Tech.Ed in India, which takes place in Bangalore from 23 - 25 March. On 24 March Brian Hall, general manager of Internet Explorer And Windows Live is due to give the opening keynote speech at 9.30am local time.

The date conflicts with other reports that suggest that the ninth instalment of the world's most popular web browser will hit on 14 March during the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

Whatever the actual release date turns out to be, it's likely that Microsoft's browser is going to go head-to-head with the forthcoming Firefox 4 browser from Mozilla, which should also go live this month.

Internet Explorer may be the world's most popular browser, but its power has decreased rapidly over the last few years. Firefox has been gaining ground on it rapidly since its introduction in 2004, and it now also faces huge pressure from the ever expanding Chrome browser from Google.

Microsoft has stated that beta versions of IE9 have been downloaded 36 million times and the release candidate had topped 11 million downloads too.

But, with Microsoft's browser often seen as the dead horse of the browser market by serious web users, it will take a monumental effort to grab users back from Mozilla or Google.

Roll on 24 March (or 14 March) so as we can find out if it has what it takes.

What is your browser of choice? Are you an ex-IE user considering a return? Let us know using the comments below.