According to the July statistics released by Web metrics firm Net Applications, the usage share of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser witnessed its second consecutive monthly gain, largely at the expense of rival browsers - Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

While the browser market share of the IS witnesses a second monthly increase in a row, the share of Firefox underwent its biggest one-month decline in over a year; and that of Chrome witnessed a break in its run of 20 successive months of increases.

Going by the statistics, IE accounted for 60.7 percent of all browsers used worldwide, by the end of July. The four-tenth percentage point increase was not only the second monthly increase after June, but was also the second-highest month-on-month increase recorded for the browser.

With the July increase, the browser market share of IE has effectively reached back to its 60.7 percent market share level that it boasted in March last year.

With the Net Applications’ data helping Microsoft proclaim the success of its browser market strategy over the last three month, Roger Capriotti, a product management lead on the IE team, referring to the July figures, said: “To see two consecutive months worldwide is encouraging and promising.”

Furthermore, boasting the overall 26.9 percent market share of Microsoft’s newest IE8 browser, Capriotti said: “IE8 is the most widely-used and the fastest-growing browser.”