Appleis Safari Web browser ended 2006 with 4.24 percent of the overall browser market, and in January it climbed up to 4.7 percent. Firefox slipped a little from 14 percent to 13.67, and Microsoftis Internet Explorer was fairly stable, moving from 79.64 percent to 79.75 percent, according to Market Share.
The Mac-only Safari browser is still slowly gaining ground, and continues to hold the number three spot in the browser wars. The cross-platform Firefox still has a strong hold on the second place position, and has been gaining share to. In January, 2006, Firefox held 9.5 percent of the market.
Microsoftis Windows-only Internet Explorer continues to dominate the playing field, but not to the degree it used to. This Web browser has been slowly bleeding away users for well over a year. This time last year, Microsoft controlled 85.31 percent of the browser market.
If Web browser stats are any indication of platform marketshare, the Mac is holding more than the 2.5 percent many analysts note. Add to that the number of Mac users that surf the Web with Firefox, and the number goes up again. This, of course, assumes that everyone with a computer visits Web pages on the Internet. Even still, the actual number of Mac users may be higher than some analysts will admit.