The latest web metrics from Net Applications, Inc. gave Internet Explorer a market share of just below 70%, a decrease of a few percentage points from last month’s numbers.

Meanwhile, Mozilla Firefox climbed above the 20% mark for the first time, while Safari increased to 7.1% and Google Chrome settled at 0.83%. The market share for browser use is available here.

I expect Internet Explorer use to diminish as the months go by as more and more home users will opt for Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google’s Chrome which is currently in Beta mode.

A large percentage of the 70% market share for Internet Explorer is corporate use. Corporations can’t easily depart from Internet Explorer due to legacy applications that only work with Internet Explorer.

As more of these applications are phased out and new applications becoming more compliant to run on any browser – not just IE, you’ll see more companies turning over to Mozilla’s Firefox.

Another factor is the economy. Belts will tighten, more corporations will opt for open source solutions if and when available. The Internet Explorer market share can dip further down under the current recession.

With IE 7 having been out for a while now and IE 8 looming in the horizon, many corporations will not upgrade to the upcoming release of IE 8. At least not right away.

Expect the trend to continue for IE Explorer. It will lose more market share in the upcoming months.