by , 10:15 AM EST, March 2nd, 2006

Safari's Web browser market share inched up ever so slightly in February, while Internet Explorer started dropping again. According to Market Share's statistics, Safari continues to hold its third-place position, rising from 3.0 percent to 3.13 percent of the market. Firefox maintained second-place while rising from 9.5 percent to 9.75 percent. Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues to come in with the majority of the market share at 85.03 percent, down from January's 85.31 percent.

Although the change in percentages since December hasn't been large, the actual number of users switching Web browser platforms is significant. Despite the fact that Microsoft pulled its unsupported version of Internet Explorer for the Mac from its Web site in January, there are still enough Mac users to qualify it as a dual platform application, which makes Safari the only single platform Web browser with a significant market share.

Safari's security was enhanced yesterday, as well. Apple released a software update yesterday that fixes a potential exploit in the Web browser.