Mozilla's Firefox web browser has boosted its total global usage share to 8.45 per cent, according to figures by web analytics company Onestat.com.

Firefox's total usage share has increased by more than one per cent since November 2004, the web analytics company said. Mozilla announced last month that downloads of Firefox had hit 25 million since it was launched.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) still dominates the global browser market with a usage share of 87.28 per cent, 1.62 per cent less than at the end of November 2004, according to Onestat.com.

"It seems that global usage of Firefox is increasing and global usage of IE is decreasing. It looks like users of IE 5 are switching to Firefox instead of upgrading to IE 6.0," said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.

The global usage share of Apple's Safari has increased from 0.91 per cent to 1.21 per cent since November 2004. Netscape (1.11 per cent) and Opera (1.09 per cent) are the fourth and fifth most used browsers.