By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 10:00 AM EST

Apple's share of the worldwide computer installed based rose to over 6.6 percent last month, helped largely by growth of Intel-based systems, according to just-released data from market research firm Net Applications. At the same time, the company's Safari web browser also posted healthy share gains.

For the month of September, the percentage of Internet users running the Intel version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system grew more than 14.5 percent to 3.23 percent, up from 2.82 percent in August. Some of those users appear to have upgraded from systems running the PowerPC version of Mac OS X, which saw its share dip slight to 3.33 percent from 3.38 percent.

When combined, however, Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac systems accounted for more than 6.61 percent of the worldwide computer installed base in September, according to Net Applications. That represents a 40 percent surge from the same time a year ago, when both flavors of the Mac OS combined for just a 4.72 share. It also represents a 7.5 percent increase from August, when both versions combined for a 6.15 percent share.

Apple also continued to fair well in the Web browser department, with usage of its Safari browser rising some 43 percent over the course of the past year. According to Net Applications, Safari accounted for 5.07 percent of web traffic in September, up from just 3.53 percent during the same time last year.



Usage of the Safari browser was also up more than 8 percent from August when it registered a 4.68 percent share. Overall, Safari posted the largest share gain of any other browser during September.



Net Applications says it uses a unique methodology for collecting its market share data. This includes collecting data from the browsers of site visitors to their exclusive on demand network of small to medium enterprise live stats customers, which consists of more than 40,000 urls.