Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser market share has dipped to a historic all-time-low in April, at under 60 percent, according the latest NetApplications statistics. Internet Explorer's losses are at the expense of Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome browser which continue to grow more popular.

For the first time since Internet Explorer 4 won over Netscape over 10 years ago, Microsoft's browser has dropped in usage to 59.95 per cent market share in April this year. Internet Explorer had an 80 percent market share less than two years ago.

According to the NetApplications statistics, Mozilla's Firefox browser now has nearly 25 percent market share, and has been stationery for the last two months at around a quarter of the market. Firefox is still the largest threat to Internet Explorer's dominance.

Lower down in the NetApplication rankings was Google's Chrome (6.7 percent), leading the WebKit-powered browsers, ahead of Apple's Safari (4.7 percent). Chrome's surge in use is impressive, considering it had zero percent share prior to 2009.

Opera, which has been recently in the news with their new Opera Mini browser for iPhone, commands only 2.3 percent of the market in the NetApplications statistics.

NetApplications browser market share statistics for April 2010.

NetApplciation's numbers are not too far off from StatCounter data either, which says that Internet Explorer has 56.5 percent of the market share, followed by Firefox with 31.3 per cent, then by Chrome and Safari with 5.3 and 3.6 percent respectively. StatCounter measures Opera at 2.2 percent.

Nielsen data on the other hand, via a BBC report, suggest that Internet Explorer has not lost much ground against its fellow rival browsers, and still commands 70 per cent of the market, while Mozilla has only 18 percent.