Despite the March release of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft has seen its browser shares decline once more according to web usage data published on Sunday.
According to Network World, Internet Explorer dropped eight-tenths of a percent in browser share during April, falling to 55.1% overall, the lowest figure Microsoft has seen for years.
Microsoft was not the only browser based company to see percentages fall however, with Firefox dropping two-tenths of a percentage to 21.6%.
It was Apple’s Safari browser that grew the most during April, posting a rise of five-tenths to a record 7.2% for the browser that ships with Mac OS X and iOS, along with a downloadable version for the Windows operating system. Net Applications tracking stated that this one-month gain was the biggest-ever by the Safari browser.
Google’s Chrome browser increased once more, with a four-tenths of a percentage rise, making up an 11.9% share of the browser market for April. Despite this, the increase was lower than their previous average seen over the last 12 months.
The article went on to state that other analytics companies showed differing share amounts for each browser, but the same trends remained, with Internet Explorer and Firefox losing market share, while both Chrome and Safari gained.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 browser has been heralded as one of the company’s best releases in years, but despite it accounting for 2.4% of all browser share, the growth was offset by a 1.4% drop in the older Internet Explorer 8 release to 33.1%. This trend also hit all of Microsoft’s other browsers, with IE6 falling to 10.9% and Internet Explorer 7 landing at 7.4%.