Highlights from NetApplications data for January '09 - Firefox and Mac up, Windows continues to slide

NetApplicationsdata for January '09 is out so it's time to take a look at the data.

Note: I know that many of you distrust NetApplications data, but remember that we are only using the data to examine trends.

• Windows market share continues to slide, down to 88.26% (down from 88.68% previous month, and down from 91.50% a year ago).
• Mac share holds onto gains made during the holidays to grab 9.93% (up from 9.67% a month ago, and up from 7.57% a year ago).
• iPhone up to 0.48% (up from 0.44% previous month, and up from 0.13% a year ago).
• Internet Explorer down to 67.55% (down from 68.15% last month, and down from 74.83% a year ago). Looking at individual versions, IE7 is up to 47.32% (up from 46.77% previous month, and up from 42.93% a year ago) and IE6 usage is down to 19.21% (down from 20.46% previous month, and down from 32.30% a year ago).
• Firefox up to 21.53% (up from 21.34% previous month, and up from 16.98% a year ago).
• Safari on the up, to 8.29% (up from 7.93% previous month, and up from 5.82% a year ago).

NetApplication's Global Market Share Statistics are based on aggregate data from a variety of ecommerce, corporate, and content provider websites from dozens of countries in regions which include North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia, the Pacific Rim, and Parts of Asia. Data is based on approximately 160 million unique monthly visitors.