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.]
so basically they are tied in somehow with the PC idiots, and decided to scew their reports…
so tell me how exactly, what math did they use….
HOW DOES GREATER MARKET SHARE IN ONE PLACE EQUAL LOWER OVERALL MARKET SHARE?!?!?!?!!?
unless they jsut throw that countries numbers out… it makes NO SENCE..
I want to know how big their check was fo delaying and skewing the report.
Sorry to “beleaguer” anyone with this, but is VERY important, and should not be ignored
Google – “Microsoft Chinese Government”
Get back some interesting hits, including this from Wiki …
Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
A nice overview of the situation there regarding Freedom, Democracy, Open Speech, etc
All those things we take for granted about the Internet, yes ?
Well, another hit is from Microsoft
Microsoft and China Announce Government Security Program Agreement
(sorry for my lack of expertise with imbedded links here, again – http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/feb03/02-28GSPChinaPR.mspx)
In that 2003 press release, Billy Boy himself proudly says …
“As part of Microsoft’s commitment to creating a Trustworthy Computing environment, we are pleased to have signed this agreement. As a government trusted partner, we are committed to providing the Chinese government with information that will help them deploy and maintain secure computing infrastructures. We see this agreement as a significant step forward in Microsoft’s relations with the Chinese government.”
If Chinese Government can’t make Windows work well enough to find dissident emails or web sites ?
Screw ’em – let them hack it out like the rest of the Governments or Businesses in the World.
(and you Brits beware, seems Billy made same “deal” with your Gov. also)
I’ve asked this question here before, will ask it again …
Doesn’t the USA have Laws about exporting sensitive technology of a National Security Nature ?
Who you working for Micro$oft? And who allowed you to do this?
Oh yes, 2003 … well, think we know who ?
And very interesting in light of the timing following the Monopoly “punishment”
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AND – Apple, Google, et al
You be very careful in YOUR dealings with China.
Don’t go Microsoft on us.
BC
So Apple has even more potential for worldwide growth?!
“Um, what? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, that it gets *less* weight? Or am I missing something?”
Probably, since the Chinese are STEALING more software, which doesn’t portend well for any Developers (the only ones who should give a shit about these market share numbers).
For web browsers it matters, since you don’t spend. But everyone in Asia uses the default *groan* IE anyway.
Holy Chit™
Dug a little deeper, found more details from Microsoft …
“A Matter of National Security: Microsoft Government Security Program Provides National Governments with Access to Windows Source Code”
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2003/jan03/01-14gspmundie.mspx
Makes “1984” or “Fahrenheit 451” look like they were written by amateurs
We are truly living in a “Brave New World”
BC
Oh yea, includes photo of the po’ dweeb VP running that show, bless HIS heart
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This is just unreal. They’re using CIA data that’s 3 years old? BEFORE the iPhone, the most heavily used internet phone in the world was released? And that’s how they’re determining marketshare? Could these clowns be anymore out of touch with reality?
Trying to use internet access as your benchmark is absolute idiocy. I access the internet many times a day through my iPhone, home computer, and multiple computers at work. Just me, one person; not a couple dozen users because of my “uses” of the internet through multiple locations and devices. And I’m not the only one that uses the internet this way.
If you want to see what “marketshare” is really relevant, look at the financial standing of the players involved. Marketshare is only relevant to the number of those in the market for the goods and services that are being tracked. It’s not based on raw population, it’s based on those in the market for the goods and services that are being tracked.
75% of China is squatting-in-the-dirt poor; they are not customers nor are they going to be. Practically everyone in the U.S. is a customer in some way or very soon will be.
You can’t base marketshare on population or internet usage statistics. Too many variables that can’t be factored or filtered.
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics….talk about rubbish…
What’s “baldu”? Never heard anything about that. Google too!
Boycott China… these cave retards want to dominate the world… if you don’t they will own your a$$ soon.
The purpose of their change remains valid, despite all the outpouring of vitriol above. We have all known fairly well that the Mac market share in the US is inching close to double-digits, whereas its global share is not much higher than 3-4%. These numbers are tracked by many respectable experts in the field, using various methodologies in an attempt to get as accurate data as possible, Net Applications has discovered that their old methodology provides data that is becoming more and more different, compared to these other sources, and they decided to investigate why is that the case. They discovered the cause and made the change.
Neither did Mac market share suddenly drop, nor did Windows market share suddenly rise. They just made the change in the methodology of collecting data that was necessary in order for their reports to seem realistic. Had they not done the change, nobody (other than Apple PR) would buy these reports, where the numbers are so out of whack, compared to other sources.
I can’t for the life of me, figure out why is everyone so upset about this.
balmer probably gave the company a lazy million to change their reporting structure. its exactly the sort of thing microsoft would do under the table.
You have to keep in mind that 42.7% of all statistics are made up due to inaccurate collecting methods.
@ Richie
So you perpetrate a lie, and for what reason?
” 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.”
“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.”
BINGO!!!! I smell Ballmer!
@Predrag:
“The purpose of their change remains valid, despite all the outpouring of vitriol above. We have all known fairly well that the Mac market share in the US is inching close to double-digits, whereas its global share is not much higher than 3-4%. These numbers are tracked by many respectable experts in the field, using various methodologies in an attempt to get as accurate data as possible, Net Applications has discovered that their old methodology provides data that is becoming more and more different, compared to these other sources, and they decided to investigate why is that the case. They discovered the cause and made the change.”
If that is the case, you may have a bit of a point. It sure sounded like the report was stating that “a more correct procedure of looking at the data” would show that “Apple has lost marketshare” from that which is commonly reported, and “Microsoft has gained marketshare” from what is commonly reported.
The issue is that it seems an odd way of looking at “marketshare” in any meaningful way, and the data used in this odd way may be out of date or suspect to boot. And the conclusions distort the true story about the choices people are making.
Normally, I understand that “marketshare” as commonly talked about, has to do with new computers purchased. For sake of argument, lets say Apple sells more and more each quarter, Dell and everyone else sell less. Apple’s marketshare goes up, Dell’s and HP’s (and thus MS’) go down. Fair enough.
Noone can really say anything meaningful about installed base. How are old computers actually used? Are they in use at all? If they are Macs, they probably are. Are we talking about cash registers, are we talking about warehouses of junk that no-one wants?
So, suddenly, someone decides that every household in China must surely have a PC. We don’t know anything about the PC’s. They are probably not Dells or HPs, probably some generic Chinese PC. So, they were probably not included in analysis of known supply chains and computer retailers. And yet, they must surely run Windows. Oh no, we better account for all those PCs we never thought of, the ones that are outside the supply chain data we do have. Surely, these PCs were bought recently and China’s internal supply chains should have a chance at inclusion in the data, so we don’t have to exclude them as part of the installed base figures.
Voila, 800 million or so new computers added to supply chain figures which completely dilutes Apple’s “marketshare” but bolsters MS’.
Analysis: Apple is not really making any market gain; people are not really choosing Macs over PCs; Apple is all about the cool factor and clever marketing, and when real people (including 3 billion Chinese — that we already knew about) have a choice, they overwhelmingly choose PCs running Windows. Business as usual.
OMG, the things people can invent to not have to work and we have all sat here and wasted 30 min! 30 min on “trends” Trends? Q over Q mac puts cold hard cash in the bank–now that’s a trend worth following!
weight a minute–did I read that right? china gets more wait than we do because they have fewer computers on the internet?
Dave,
China gets more wait [sic] for precisely that reason. The logic behind it is, in the US, vast majority of computers show up on the internet. In China, very few of them actually are online. If you use internet traffic to measure the installed computer base, China will appear as if they have very few computers, which is not accurate. So, Net Applications did what counterproductive explained above, by making some pretty broad assumptions.
I can’t see anywhere that they now claimed that Windows gained market share, or that Mac lost market share. Since they don’t have enough data reported using new methodology, it is impossible to detect any trends from their new data. We’ll just have to wait for the next few reports to see the actual trends.
As MDN always said before, market share means different things to different people and is impossible to determine even roughly, but one thing that all the “market share” reporting companies can reveal fairly accurately is trends. And one trend is extremely clear, no matter whose report you’re looking at: Mac is gaining market share at the expense of Windows. No change of reporting methodology will ever be able to hide that trend.
…”for Mac OS X, is currently over 33 million discerning users — who actually pay for software (imagine that!) “
errrrr….uhhhh……….yeah.
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