Preliminary data released by Net Applications shows that during December, Apple's  Mac operating system made for 9.63 percent of market share of Internet usage, while the company’s iPhone accounted for 0.44 percent.

In its turn, the iPod’s web share went up by 60 percent, from 0.05 percent to 0.08 percent.

The figures put the Mac OS in second place, whereas the iPhone scored the fourth position, followed by Sony’s PlayStation, in terms of browser market share for the last month of 2008.

The percentage registered by the Mac OS translates both as a record and as an increase by 32 percent from December 2007 and a more than 9 percent one from November this year.

As for the iPhone, it seems to have tripled its browser market share since the same time-frame last year, when it registered only 0.12 percent.

Top of the list was the Windows operating system, with a whopping 88.68 percent, while the third position was earned by Linux with 0.85 percent.  

Nevertheless, Windows lost 1.1 percent of web share within a single month, continuing to slip downwards.

Free or open-source operating systems such as FreeBSD and AIX made for 0.01 percent or less each.

The monthly surveys that Net Applications conducts use sampling browser data from approximately 160 million visits to the websites operated by the firm’s clients.

Although they do not measure revenue coming from sales or unit sales, these surveys stand proof of the fact that during the holidays, Apple’s products were much favored by customers, forecasting a further boost in 2009.