In December 2005, Safari's market share as measured by Market Share (Net Applications) was 3.07 percent.  In December 2006, Safari's market share comes in at 4.24 percent. To view Safari's growth over the past year, click here.  The rise from 3.07 to 4.24 represents a year-over-year growth of 38 percent (rounded to the nearest whole percent, actual rise is 38.1 percent) for the month of December.

Month to Month Comparison
Safari experienced a 25.2 percent increase from November 2006 rising from 4.03 percent 4.24 percent in December 2006.  The 38 percent growth in December 2006 was lower than the 45 percent year-over-year growth for November 2006.  It was also lower than the 53 percent increase for October 2006 and the 48 percent increase for September 2006.  It's a clear sign that the Safari growth rate slowed for the final three months of 2006.

The slowdown may be attributed to Mac users deciding to use competing browsers such as Firefox and Camino.  Note however that increase in Safari's market share can be used as a metric to track the increase in the number of Mac users as Safari is Mac OS X's default Internet browser.  When taking the other browsers into numbers into account, the data is likely to under represent the actual growth of Mac users.

Internet Explorer Continues Decline
Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has fallen 8.70 percent year-over-year falling from 87.23 percent in December 2006 to 79.64 percent in December 2006.  This outpaced the 6.32 percent, 6 percent and 5.5 percent falls year-over-year for November 2006, October 2006 and September 2006 respectively.

Firefox Continues to Grow
Mozilla's Firefox browser is up 46.2 percent year-over-year rising from 9.57 percent to 14.0 percent over the same period.  This was below the 52.7 and 51 percent increases for November 2006 and Ocotber 2006 respectively.