Apple Inc. announced Monday that it will soon offer a version of its Safari Internet browser for users of Microsoft Windows PCs, but the computer giant's shares dipped due to the lack of news about its upcoming iPhone gadget.

Chief executive Steve Jobs told the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco that Apple has launched a new version of its browser software for Windows users, which he boasted runs twice as fast as its competitors.

Apple's Safari browser, released a few years ago for its Macintosh operating system, currently accounts for about 5 percent of the world's market share of Internet browsers with over 18 million users, according to Jobs.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer is the predominant browser with a 78 percent share, while Mozilla's Firefox has rapidly climbed to gain about 15 percent of the market.

Apple's shares slipped over three percent at the close in the NASDAQ stock market to a low of 120.20 dollars, as Jobs gave little new information about the much anticipated iPhone in his keynote speech at the conference.

IPhone, a mixture of smart phone and Apple's popular iPod digital music player, is scheduled to hit the mobile phone market by the end of June.

Jobs in his speech outlined a way for programmers to write applications for the iPhone handset, but stopped short of opening up the device's software code for developers.

Stock price of the Silicon Valley company has surged nearly 40 percent on anticipation of the iPhone's potential business since it announced the iPod-like product in January.