by , 11:30 AM EDT, June 1st, 2007

Apple's Safari web browser is slowly inching towards a five percent market share after creeping up from 4.59 percent in April to 4.82 percent in May. Firefox, however lost some share to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

For the first time this year, Internet Explorer regained a little market share in May by climbing from 78.03 percent up to 78.67 percent. In comparison, the cross-platform Firefox dropped from 15.4 percent in April to 14.54 percent in May, according to data from Market Share.

Safari has been on a general upswing for a year and a half, as has Firefox. Both browsers have been slowly chipping away at Internet Explorer's piece of the browser market and have managed to keep Microsoft's Windows-only application below 80 percent since December 2006.

The slight upswing in Explorer's numbers is likely due to Windows Vista sales, but even with that increase, Safari continued to climb as well - an indication that Apple's Web browser can still gain in popularity against Microsoft's market dominance.