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Firefox took a small lead over Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer in April in terms of global market share. A new report shows that for the first time Mozilla's browser had a larger percentage of the desktop browser market than Microsoft's Windows browsers.
The figures were based on a report by StatCounter. Last month Firefox had 15.6 percent of global desktop browser usage compared to 15.5 percent for Edge and IE, according to PC Magazine.
However, the combined market share of Mozilla and Microsoft browsers are still just half of Google's Chrome. It has 60.5 percent of the desktop browser market and its use has skyrocketed in recent years.
In addition, the StatCounter report showed that IE's market share was almost four times higher than Edge. Explorer was at 12.25, while Edge had a much smaller piece of the pie at 3.25 percent.
Safari had a higher percentage of the market share than IE at 4.62, but IE finished higher than Opera at 1.92 percent.
StatCounter states that its tracking code has been installed on over 3 million sites worldwide. Each month it records over 15 billion page views.
Meanwhile, the latest results differ from analytics firm Net Applications. It reported Internet Explorer at 41.33 percent in April, which was slightly behind Chrome's 41.71 percent and much higher than Firefox at 10.06 percent.
Mozilla has been taking steps to keep up with Chrome on desktops. They include making the browser friendlier for the gaming and Internet of Things (IoT) markets, and releasing updates for 64-bit Windows OSs.
Both companies' sets of statistics show that Edge has not been a big success for Microsoft. It has been praised for using modern web standards. However, the newer browser also requires Windows 10 while many IT departments have not made an upgrade to the newest Microsoft OS.
In related news, Edge will follow Chrome and Firefox by switching on browser notifications by default, according to PCWorld. The feature will be included in Microsoft's Anniversary Update during this summer.
Notifications will alert Windows 10 users that they might need to respond. Meanwhile, they will have to give permission to each site to send updates.
Here's Firefox vs. Edge:
