by , 12:15 PM EST, December 2nd, 2005

Apple's Safari is continuing its gradual upward climb in the web browser market share battle, maintaining its number three position, according to statistics from Market Share. For the month of November, Safari inched up to 2.78 percent from October's 2.56 percent. Internet Explorer is still losing ground to other browsers, dropping to 86.08 percent from 86.52 percent. The number two browser is still Firefox, with 8.84 percent of the market.

Safari has been gaining market share all year, starting at 1.66 percent in January, and it's the only single-platform browser with any significant market share. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Netscape are all available in Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows versions.