Safari gaining popularity over Firefox

Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox browser lost market share last month. But Apple Inc.'s Safari continued to gain ground, an indicator of a slow but sure uptick in Macintosh sales.
In January, Firefox accounted for 13.7% of the browser usage market, down slightly from 14% the month before. The dip was the first since May 2006. Since then, Firefox's share has risen continually month to month.

More conspicuous than Firefox's slip, however, has been Safari's steady march. The Apple browser, which is based in part on the open-source Konqueror, boosted its share to 4.7% in January from 4.2% in December. A year ago, Safari held 3.1% of the browser market.
The increase in Safari's share has been matched move for move by a climb in Mac OS X use. In January, the combined PowerPC- and Intel-based Mac OS X share was 6.2%, up from December's 5.7%. "Both Safari and Mac OS X are heading in the same direction -- up".

Windows XP still has an overwhelming lead in operating systems, however, with 85%. Microsoft's Internet Explorer accounted for 79.8% of the browser market in January.