Net Applications, which publishes monthly so-called-but-not-really “market share” numbers for such things as browsers and operating systems, has announced that their stats are now weighted by country. The company’s website states:
In the past, we reported only on our raw numbers. As of August 1st, we have implemented retroactive country-level weighting in our reports. This means that we adjust our reports proportionally based on how much traffic we record from a country vs. how many internet users that country has. For example, although we have significant data from China, it is relatively small compared to the number of internet users in China. Therefore, we now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports. This change produces a much more accurate view of worldwide usage share statistics.
After consulting with many of the organizations we report data on, we decided to use C.I.A. data as the source of the number of internet users per country.
In addition to providing better share numbers, the reason we made this change was due to growing traffic imbalances in certain countries. Some countries were growing traffic at a much higher pace than the rest of the world and it was creating unacceptable variances in the share numbers. The reason we delayed June numbers was due to these imbalances. From now on, a single high growth country will not be able to affect the global share numbers.
This change has produced some significant changes in usage share for various technologies. The primary ones are:
Baidu – Baidu goes to 9% of global search engine usage. Baidu is on a major growth curve, which is affecting the relative share of all other search engines.
Google – Because of Baidu’s growth, Google’s global share is actually going down. This is almost completely due to Baidu and does not reflect the rest of the world.
Apple – Since Mac share in the U.S. in significantly higher than the rest of the world, Mac and Safari share drop in the global reports.
Opera – Opera goes up to 2% in global reports. This reflects the significant share they have in Eastern Europe and Asia.
Full article here.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune, “The so-called market share reports issued every month by Net Applications have long been controversial — mostly because they didn’t actually measure market share (which business people typically express as the number of widgets they sell in a given period divided by the total number of widgets sold). What Net Applications did instead was sample data from browsers visiting their clients’ websites and report what percentage came from machines running Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.”
Net Applications’ “market share” reports’ “dependability — and perhaps their credibility — just took a huge hit,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Starting in June the company changed the way it weights its data, giving more weight to page views from countries with large Internet populations that aren’t well represented by their clients (such as China) and less weight to hits from countries like the U.S. that are over-represented in their data.”
“The effect was to cause wrenching changes in the results — so wrenching that Net Applications skipped its June report entirely,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “And on Saturday, when it finally issued its July report, the new country-by-country fudge factors were applied retroactively to all past reports.”
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “To see how different they are from the old, we have to go back to May, the last month for which we have comparable data… Microsoft Windows’ share grew more than 6%; Apple Mac OS X fell more than 51%;The iPhone OS lost nearly 60%; The iPod touch — whose rapid growth was the subject of a Net Applications featured report — fell off the chart; Java ME — Sun Microsystem’s (JAVA) plaform for mobile devices, barely a blip in previous reports — grew 212%.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we’ve always noted, the actual percentage numbers are not as important as the trends shown since all “market share” reports have unique measurement sources. If anything, Net Applications is providing one measure of installed base, rather than “market share.”
Again, what’s important are the trends (and consistent data points, which, with the “country level weighting” applied retroactively, still provide consistency). The trends show Apple’s Mac OS X and Safari web browser ascending. Frankly, what’s more important to a platform’s health and to developers (at least it should be) is installed base, which, for Mac OS X, is currently over 33 million discerning users — who actually pay for software (imagine that!) — and growing.
The actual numbers can be made to say anything, but the facts remain, Windows PC shipments, even with a flood of cheapo “netbooks,” have been declining while Mac shipments continue to rise.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Scot,” “MacRadDoc,” and “qka” for the heads up.]
“Microsoft Windows’ share grew more than 6%; Apple Mac OS X fell more than 51%;The iPhone OS lost nearly 60%; The iPod touch….”
It sounds more like M$ paid off Net Applications in order to look better for their investors and to deaden any heat against Ballmer after their dismal last quarter results.
It’s the final battle between reason and insanity … looks like insanity is winning … Pc’ers just LOVE the mediocre banality of of their existence …and as Windows users…. can be on the “winning” team …. Just like the stupid sports jocks we all know and loathe. I can’t tell you how many friends of mine go on and on about how awful their computers are and can’t do this and can’t do that …. but they’re “scared” of using a mac because “its too expensive” and “nobody else uses one” and “there’s no software” for them. They are the type that wants everything free and wonder why they have viruses all over their system after downloading movies from who knows where …. They truly are the architects of their own demise …..
Of course, some can feel angry… But USA is NOT the world… Therefore the statistics are what they are!
Apple is still growing on…
What a bunch -o-bull! Question… So Who’s buying all those Macs that Apple’s selling? one user? Mac sales are increasing quater over quater. Somebody’s buying them. So take your stats and stat em up your arse!
Here’s what the CIA World Factbook website has to say on its data for internet users:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2153rank.html?countryName=United States&countryCode=us®ionCode=na&rank=3#us
******
COUNTRY COMPARISON :: INTERNET USERS
This entry gives the number of users within a country that access the Internet. Statistics vary from country to country and may include users who access the Internet at least several times a week to those who access it only once within a period of several months.
*****
So, according to the CIA data, they count equally users who may access the net several times a week to those who access it only once within months. What happened to those who access it several times a day? Sounds like the CIA is out of touch with the internet use reality.
Here are the 3 top net regions:
RANK
COUNTRY INTERNET USERS DATE OF INFORMATION
1 China 253,000,000 2008
2 European Union 247,000,000 2006
3 United States 223,000,000 2008
So, while NetApps is collecting data monthly, the adjustment, aka fudge factor, could be three years out of date. Their error rate went way, way up. Just report the RAW data, and let users do the interpretation. Adjusted data is only as good as the adjustment made, and the adjustment as I’ve pointed out is out of date and represents the broadest possible definition of internet user.
Looks like MS forgot to pay NetApplications off for the browser share too.
Expect once that check is cashed something similar will happen and it will show IE back at 95% share
Ha ha ha. “Mac share fell 51%.” Well, um, no — not at all. The calculation changed to report a different type of measure. This means any data from NetApps that’s over 3 months old can’t be compared to any new data. Very clever of them. They can claim anything now, and it’s not verifiable. One wonders how much Uncle Fester had to pay to for this…
When Net Applications data for June didn’t show up I figured Mac market share had topped 10 percent and Net Applications was wondering how to recheck its numbers.
If NetApplications were publishing in a Scientific journal, their data would be rejected for using a fudge factor that skews the results so badly. But, fortunately, the general population is more than happy to believe anything they read or hear, i.e. Fox News.
WTF? You really are an insecure libtard aren’t you?
doesn’t matter what MDN says or makes note of, the tech industry is going to have a FIELD DAY with this.
I call big time BS on this country weighted crap. sorry but should it make a difference?
Doesn’t really matter. Apple has 91% of the retail market for PCs costing more than $1000. That means 9 out of 10 dollars spent by small business owners and consumers, who actually made a real decision about what PC to purchase, bought a Mac. The rest of the market is mostly made up of corporate and government bean-counter selecting the lowest bid for a mega-order, and consumers buying the weekly special at WalMart (no real decision making except to find the lowest price).
That’s why Apple is so profitable, because it rules the portion of the PC market that is actually still profitable. And it uses that profit to further grow its business by focusing on value and quality, which explain how the “trend” is going in Apple favor. Re-adjusting how some statistical number is derived does not change the real world situation.
So 95% of the world’s population are not smart enough to use a mac? Well, I had my suspicions…
Every time a stat portraying an Apple product in a good light everybody here thinks its good, valid, depicts the stat truthfully etc etc, but when it’s the other way around, then the stats are wrong, invalid or there is an instant “who the f*** cares”-attitude.
Must be a coincidence right? Every single time ..
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We are no longer going to take our shoes and socks off too count market share. We are now just going to guess and divide by 2.
Didn’t the C.I.A use the internet as a source to help determine that Iraq was continuing to develop their weapons of mass destruction program?
@ Coincidence
Of course! This is MacDailyNews, not M$DailyDrivel.
Based on this market share Rob Enderle will be predicting the emanate demise of Apple some time next week, if he’s out of the nut house yet.
why not just group ALL OS X based Macs together (iPhone OS is OS X) AND all Windows versions including mobile?
just a lot easier…
@Mr.Fergus
Time to break out the “Apple Death Knell Counter” again.
Funny – The popular media spin on this is that Apple suddenly lost half its market share. In the real world, nothing changed, except for the way some statistical number was calculated. Apple is just as popular or unpopular (depending on your point of view) as it was yesterday.
Most likely, Microsoft gave Net Applications some money to change the way it calculates its numbers.
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WTF are THOSE guys smoking ?
Wish they wouldn’t bogart, sounds like some Good Chit™
Glad so many here at least picked up on the CIA Number B.S.
Even IF the CIA had “real numbers” no way in Hell they let that info out. And what they would let out is probably “MIS-information.”
But that’s assuming the CIA is still the Company many of us came to know and love from the 1950s through the end of Cold War.
These days? Not so sure – they might now be the Microsoft of Global Intel.
Either way, not wise to put much credence in their “info” available to Public.
But Elmer, bless your heart, you waskley wabbit you.
Can now more fully appreciate and understand how we got in our Current Situation™ when Wall Street and the Global Financial System is using and apparently relying on such technical terms as …
“Fudge Factor”
Isn’t that only applied to Zune Sales ?
BC
As Mark said, “There are lies, damn lies, and … “
——————-
Whoa, ok, some of you posting as I wrote this gave me a thought …
We know Microsoft gave China Gov. the keys to “Holy of Holies” (api’s etc) for Windows so they would choose Windows instead of Linux, et al.
And China Gov. happily accepted so they could hack email, keep eye on Folks, etc
Well, what if Microsoft also happily spread around Freebie Versions of Windows to China Public ?
Kind of like the IE-Netscape story, but now the whole OS ? (sure would increase their “share”)
With their perverse way of doing things, almost anything could be possible ?
Just a thought
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“Translation: Now, no one can figure out what the heck is going on.”
That’s the most accurate thing posted here. What should matter most to the Apple community is that the company is strong, financially viable and in a growth trend. More than that isn’t too important in light of M$ global dominance.
“Every time a stat portraying an Apple product in a good light everybody here thinks its good, valid, depicts the stat truthfully etc etc, but when it’s the other way around, then the stats are wrong, invalid or there is an instant “who the f*** cares”-attitude.
“
Indeed. There’s a reason it’s called the MacDefenseNetwork. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
@Anonymous©
“…So, according to the CIA data, they count equally users who may access the net several times a week to those who access it only once within months. What happened to those who access it several times a day? Sounds like the CIA is out of touch with the internet use reality.
Here are the 3 top net regions:
RANK
COUNTRY INTERNET USERS DATE OF INFORMATION
1 China 253,000,000 2008
2 European Union 247,000,000 2006
3 United States 223,000,000 2008…”
Yeah. And not only that, can the average Chinese internet user access the whole internet? Sounds like they have to go through through their own Baldu, instead of being able to choose Google or something. Maybe they don’t have “the real internet” but something like an AOL network. In which case, that is another reason to weight the figures for China less.
If the Chinese are not hitting the same sites as everyone else, then why worry about what browsers they are using to hit the sites they do hit? The analysts still can’t take away from the fact that, however many Safari users there actually are in total, iPhone accounts for over 50% percent of the traffic from mobile users on the major sites analysed. That fact can’t be made insignificant just because billions of other people around the world have mobile phones other than iPhones, but never visit the sites that were analysed.
Now iPhone may make it big in China — unfortunately, they seem to be getting an iPhone without WIFI. So now there will be millions more iPhones, but the internet traffic coming from iPhones may not grow proportionally. So Apple loses out in the figures again. It’s too bad, because the surfing experience might be better than what the Chinese are used to on their desktops, and you can bet everyone would want to surf the net on their phones.
Rip
I think market share has been moving in the direction of Unix (if you count Linux as part of the greater, overall Unix family of OS) here in the free world. Why change the methodology? And why change it now?
What do you expect for Communist China? Should they really be weighted so heavily if their Internet is so highly censored? Do they truly have OS or platform choice? Certainly, their choices are not anywhere near the same as we have here in the free world. And one must have “access” there, normally via official channels.
The following two sentences, in the explanation of “Country Level Weighting,” make no sense at all: “For example, although we have significant data from China, it is relatively small compared to the number of internet users in China. Therefore, we now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports.” I think they are “mirror imaging” life in China with that in the West. Since one normally needs official access to use the Internet in China, the average individual’s personal use will be much less there. Private use will be in line with “internet cafe” usage. Those spending long periods online are authorized to do so in an official capacity. All use and users are monitored. And this monitoring is a significant portion of Chinese Internet usage. In other words, Chinese Internet usage is mostly official use. Personal use of computers is significantly less than official use, and significantly less than in the free world. And it’s conducted using a much higher proportion of officially-owned, rather than privately-owned, computers.
Many will have a hard time accepting the “new” analysis. And even if the raw statistics are accurate, is the new analysis meaningful? It may be much less meaningful than before NetApplications “changed the rules.” They may well have overly skewed their analysis to the point that it is no longer meaningful to anyone who uses their products.
Furthermore, they risk the idea that many will view this rules change cynically, that it smacks of Microsoft Corporation [“After consulting with many of the organizations we report data on”], who are known for their underhanded behavior (and dozens of court rulings against them both here in the US and abroad for this underhanded behavior). Since they were being reported as below 90% OS market share — and falling badly — before NetApplications changed the rules, there are those who will believe that they’ve “gotten” to NetApplications and, perhaps, paid them off (or threatened to never cooperate with them again). After all, NetApplications changed the rules during what appears to be significant change away from their products and in the direction of Unix.
But most significantly, the entire NetApplications organization may well lose credibility. If one doesn’t like the score, just change the rules.