“Apple’s Mac operating system market share is up 35 percent year-over-year from October 2005 to October 2006. Data rounded to the nearest whole percent, actual rise is 34.6 percent,” Switch To A Mac reports.
Key Percent Increases
• Up 52.8 percent since January 2005
• Up 48.0 percent since April 2005 (Mac OS X Tiger launched April 29, 2005)
• Up 23.8 percent January to October 2006 – despite Intel transition
• Up 10.4 percent since September 2006
• Up 20.3 percent since August 2006
The October 2006 Key Percentages outpaced the growth reported for September 2006 which was as follows:
• Up 38.4 percent since January 2005
• Up 34.0 percent since April 2005 (Mac OS X Tiger launched April 29, 2005)
• Up 12.1 percent January to September 2006
• Up 9.0 percent since August 2006
Included in the full article is an updated view of Apple’s Mac OS market share month by month for calender year 2006 up to and including October 2006. Switch To A Mac writes, “Pay careful attention to the numbers because Market Share splits Mac operating system data into two groups, Mac OS and MacIntel. MacIntel represents Intel builds of Mac OS X Tiger. Have a look at the October 2006 data. Mac OS is reported to have 4.09 percent of the operating system share while MacIntel is reported to have 1.12 percent operating system market share. When the numbers are combined, we get 5.21 percent.”
Full article with more detail and graphs here.
MacDailyNews Note: These results are from Net Applications.com’s Market Share which collects data from the browsers of site visitors to their exclusive on demand network of small to medium enterprise live stats customers. The sample size for these sites is more than 40,000 URLs and growing. The information published is an aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics. Other recent market share measures by Gartner and IDC pegged Q3 2006 U.S. Mac share of the PC market at 6.1% and 5.8%, up from 4.6% and 4.8% in Q2 2006, respectively.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Analyst: Apple has ‘real shot at dramatically expanding Macintosh market share’ – October 31, 2006
Analyst: Apple Mac gains market share, the reason why is significant – October 26, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 5.8% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 6.1% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Apple Q4 earnings results: $546M net profit on $4.84B revenue, sold 1.61M Macs, 8.729M iPods – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
IDC: Apple Mac attained 4.8% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
An unusual way of expressing the statistic, albeit technically correct. However, a more neutral way of expressing the same statistics would have been to state that MacOS’s market share had increased by 1% over the time period, from 4.21% to 5.21%. Good news nonetheless, but not such a headline grabber.
In other shocking news, recent reports suggest that 50% of the population have below average reading skills, a figure unchanged since records began.
Now let’s get that 10% market share mark shall we?
To paraphase Steve Jobs, “What’s a few market share points?” from M$, but Redmond may now be rethinking their strategy.
Reality Check:
a change from 4.21% to 5.21% is a 23.8% increase, not 1%. I think you meant to say “increased by 1 percentage point” not 1%.
Hey Reality Check,
I don’t see a problem with the headline. In fact, it’s an accurate way to describe growth. Besides, the investment community and Wall Street always talk about percent increase whenever the analyze year over year and quarter to quarter results.
Anyway, this is great news for Apple.
Wait! No, pleeeeeease. I’m sorrry. I won’t do it again. noooooooooo…..come back……!
Vissstaaa.. Viiiiiiiiiistaaaa…..!
Well, if one’s overall marketshare increases from 4.21% to 5.21%, it’s not simply a 1% increase. It’s a “one percentage point” share increase, and there is a big difference between the two.
It has nothing to do with being neutral or not, it has to do with being mathematically correct.
Interesting how the MacOS share appears to be holding too, although it may be just easier for MacOS browsers to identify themselves as such these days thanks to web developers having to think outside of IE.
SJR is correct. The way switchtoamac.com reported the data is also correct. It’s sad that people really don’t understand the difference between “percent” and “percent increase”
If I had 10 jelly beans and I add 2 more, I’d have a total of 12 jelly beans. This represents a 20% increase.
12 – 10 = 2
2 / 10 = .2
.2 * 100 = 20%
You think you are so smart and then you make such a mistake:
“In other shocking news, recent reports suggest that 50% of the population have below average reading skills, a figure unchanged since records began.” (Reality Check)
While with some irony you want to show of your knowledge in statistics, you are actually wrong. Your joke does not work like this:
Consider a sample of reading skills (1=worst, 5=best) like this:
(1,2,5,5,5,5,5).
Average skill level: 28/7 = 4
Percentage of population with below-average reading skills: 2/7, i.e. far less than 50%. In other words: Your joke does not work, because this percentage *does* fluctuate.
The correct way to put such a joke is:
“All car drivers in the US believe they drive better than average.”
So, next time when you are trying to be a smart-ass, do it right.
Whatever quibbling is done over percentage point increases, it’s great news for the Macintosh!
50% of the population DO NOT have below average reading skills.
50% of the population is below the mean. It’s two entirely different things.
I have always been told that,
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
“Figures don’t lie, but liers can figure!”
Dream on.
The price we are paying to celebrate Apple’s market share in the single digits is too high.
Apple’s products – software and hardware – are moving quickly and steadily toward average – latest examples: Mac’s worst ever upgrade: iTunes 7.0; new portables out of date upon release; MacPros disappointingly little performance improvement over PowerMacs; and, most prfoundly: customer care, customer service down the toilet; Apple arrogance at all time high.
Pretty soon we will be fooling ourselves when we say Apple’s stuff is better than Microsoft’s stuff.
Peterson – you may be correct that Apple’s quality control is going down because their volume is increasing. We will all have to keep an eye on that and make enough noise when QC is becoming a significant issue. It could be that Apple need some time to adjust to the increased demand for their products.
Here’s a good example of Apple being overwhelmed to some extent. I took my 3 yr old PB in for a repair. The Genius at the Bar told me it could take up to a week to repair because they are really busy. They do the repairs at the store because Apple are swamped at their repair centers.
Despite this, the mac was repaired within 3 working days, but unlike previous times they did not clean the screen or housing.
The reality is that as Apple increase their market share, they will have to adjust how they check on their QC and how they provide customer support.
Getting to 10 % US and 5 % market share will be a big deal for Apple. The former could happen within 12 months.
I love watching idiots arguing about math.
Poo-Bah, the “mean” and the “average” are exactly the same thing. The word you were looking for was “median.”
“to Reality Check,” your “above average driver” joke has exactly the same problem. You don’t know the difference between mean and median. Consider a professional racecar drive and four grandmothers. Only one of the five will have above average driving skills. But three will have above median driving skills.
“Reality Check,” I think everybody has already pointed out what an idiot you are so I won’t jump on the bandwagon.
Oy.
See, I’m an idiot too. I meant to say that TWO will have above median driving skills.
Reality Check said:
“50% of the population have below average reading skills”
Well, it is sad, albeit pretty normal that 50% of any population have above and the remaining 50% have below average skills in whatever is measured. That’s why it’s the average.
Anyway: Never trust a statistc you haven’t forged yourself!
Poo-Bah, that was just mean of you!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
The statistics cited are good news – even if we only understand them as they were intended – 35% growth in share rather than growth TO a 35% share. Another year or three at this rate (20% to 40% growth-in-share per year) and Apple will own some serious market share. Not 35%, to be sure, but double digits. And third place in the sweepstakes, moving ahead of Gateway.
I was told dividing by zero is not possible.
Care to explain?
I do it daily, so what gives?
Peterson, you are such a troll, shouldn’t you be reformatting, virus cleansing, defragging, reinstallign, relicensing your wonderful MS products?
If you really think anyone in their right mind makes any kind of close comparison between Microsoft and Apple you are wrong. As it was put the other day you can’t really compare the odour of Chanel No 5 against a squirt from a skunk’s anal gland.
And yes the market share figures are starting to get some attention, and will be getting hugely more too.
I have learned two things in life:
1) five out of four people are bad at math
2) 23.46% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Apple’s market share is going up no matter how you calculate it/
I had a bad experience last night.
You are an agressive bunch of morons aren’t you?
I agree, I should have said “MacOS’s market share had increased by 1 percentage *point* over the time period, from 4.21% to 5.21%.”. Apologies for the missing word. However, the point remains: it is very misleading to express a percentage point increase of 1% as a percentage increase of 30%. This is precisely why the term percentage point exists.
Regarding my albeit feable attempt at humour with the statistic on reading, the rudeness of forum members here never fails to amaze. Irony always appears to missed on these forums. However, for those doubting my statistical abilities, bear in mind that for any large sample (such as national reading stats), the population will tend to a Gaussian distribution (see central limit theorem). Thus the trivial examples given here are not valid and prove nothing. With a Gaussian distribution, the mean equals the median, and so yes indeed, 50% of the population will be “below average”. The whole point of this accurate but meaningless statement is that poorly expressed statistical statements (in this case, the mathematically vague meaning of “average”) can easily result in dramatic sounding, but meaningless, headlines.
Sheesh guys. For a community that claims to represent the thinking portion of the computing market, you really do consistently show a childish and testosterone-fueled level of Internet aggression that does nothing to attract people to the platform…
Just to help out those specific forum members above with math problems:
“toRealityCheck”: Go read about the central limit theory, your example distribution is not valid for a large sample size. Secondly, “Average skill level” is totally imprecise – you meant “mean”, and the joke is actually based around the common usage of “average” to mean “median”.
“Poo-Bah”: Actually you’re quite wrong. In general, 50% is always below the median, not the mean.
“Soko”: I think you missed the joke.