Apple’s Mac OS X share of Web consumption up 29% in past year as Windows slowly loses share

“Web measurement company Quantcast recently began publishing stats on operating system browser share from its sample of quantified publishers. Data shows that in January 2010, Microsoft Windows accounted for 86.8% share of North American web consumption, Apple OS X accounted for 10.9%, and mobile browsers accounted for 1.3%,” LeeAnn Prescott reports for VentureBeat. “Apple’s relative share has grown by 29.4% in the past year, while Windows lost 3.8%.”

“Quantcast data measured from the mobile web traffic of quantified sites, show that the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch accounted for more than 60% of mobile web consumption in January 2010 in North America,” Prescott reports.

“Quantcast’s co-founder and CEO Konrad Feldman said the data represents ‘virtually everyone’ in North America. In fact, it represents everyone who visits one of the many sites that allow Quantcast to measure its traffic,” Prescott reports. “While the list includes many leading ad-supported sites, it leaves out the largest sites on the internet, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Wikipedia. On a global basis, Quantcast claims it reaches a billion people, which means the global data is most likely far more representative than any other measurement firm. Operating system usage share figures can vary greatly depending on the source, and Quantcast’s data is a welcome addition to the collection of data on this metric.”

Full article here.

More info and stats via Quantcast here.

MacDailyNews Take: Slowly, but surely, the world wakes up. Well, most of it:

“When you get right down to it, it’s a rounding error.” – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer commenting on Apple Macintosh’s market share, July 2009

While Mac OS X’s share gains certainly are nice, hitting the tipping point would be much nicer.

26 Comments

  1. @deepdish

    A tipping point can be imagined by looking at a desktop wave machine. When the tilt reaches the point where the water rushes to the low point, that is the tipping point.

    For the Mac I’ve always guessed it’d be around the 20% point.

  2. Apple has two front to win in the battle for market share: Consumer and Business

    They are winning the consumer battle and have a long way to go with business.

    But in the end does it matter? They control the high end market, earn the majority of the profit from computer sales and are developing new interest via sales of it’s mobile devices.

  3. I would love to know how many people would classify themselves as somewhat misrepresented by these stats, in that if they had their choice, they’d be using a Mac all of the time including at work. Like me.

    I recognize that the stat is simply measuring usage, but think how different it might be if we could all use our platform of choice. Apple could well be closer to 20%.

  4. The Mac will top out at 25%. The iPhone/iPod touch/iPad will dominate.

    My $.02.

    Peace.
    Olmecmystic ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool smile” style=”border:0;” />

  5. @MDN: “When you get right down to it, it’s a rounding error.” – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer commenting on Apple Macintosh’s market share, July 2009

    Not quite, MDN: A fair reading of the Ballmer quote is that he was commenting on *changes* in the Mac’s market share during the period mentioned in the article — NOT the Mac’s overall market share.

    Wow! Defending Ballmer, however weakly, was more traumatic than I thought it would be. Please don’t make anyone do it again. Please.

  6. @Bokweb:

    I’m with you; I don’t won’t to defend M$ either, but but the Big Dog is still Doze, no matter how you spin the numbers.

    It would be impressive if I said I lost 100% more weight in the last three months than the three months before that, but would you be as impressed if I said I went from a one-pound loss in the previous quarter to a two-pound loss this quarter? Probably not.

  7. The real story is more complex than the Wintel pundits will admit. Windows Seven’s biggest competitor is not Mac OSX; it is Windows XP.

    Windows XP comprises between 60 to 70 percent of the world’s computer user base. About two-thirds of the XP users do not have hardware new enough to take advantage of Windows Seven. Nor is this necessary.

    These computers are doing useful functions which aren’t benefited by an upgrade. They are old computers running old software which works well enough for occasional business use. Or they are running displays, cash registers or doing light duty use as front ends to mainframes or the web. Hence, they are unlikely to be upgraded soon until the hardware breaks. It is not automatic that the owners will buy a new Wintel machine; Apple and Chrome may offer other advantages.

    What is distressing about this story is that 18% of the world’s computers were on Vista at Windows Seven’s release. About half of those had been downgraded to Windows XP. All of those computers should have been upgraded, because Windows Seven offers better security than XP or Vista. But, WIndows Seven’s Usage has only moved from 2% to 9% in four months.

    This is less than half as fast as Mac users are upgrading to Snow Leopard. Most Mac users tend to upgrade; 93% of Mac Users had upgraded to Leopard 10.5 in 19 months. Snow Leopard, at current rates, will be at 90% in 12 to 14 months.

    This is important because Apple won’t move to the 64 bit kernel, by default, until enough Apps have upgraded to 64 bit code and enough people are already booting into the 64 bit kernel. The main advantage for booting into the 64 bit kernel is enhanced speed, followed by improved security.

    The important thing, though, is that the 32 bit Carbon API’s will be rendered legacy and thus, apps in it will be sidelined. The 64 bit Cocoa apps will be much faster and more flexible, so there is little reason for newer machines to use Carbon. The Mac will become fully Object Oriented in five years, when Carbon is gone.

    Apple hasn’t upgraded all of its own apps to Cocoa yet, but it will before Mac OSX 10.7 is released in 12 to 18 months.

  8. It’s hard to tell what the real figures are, Cubert, because the people putting out this data don’t break it down. It would be useful just to know what the sales and the user base is in the markets in which Apple sells into, but these sources don’t cover that.

    Empirical data from actually seeing college students at various universities, give the Mac a 60% user base for notebooks. But, this is invalid because we don’t have hard figures. We don’t have hard figures because the people asking the questions aren’t asking the right ones.

    Then we have the fact that, at least, 60% of the World’s computers are in Windows XP. These users are not likely to be active buyers of replacement computers or upgrades. The Windows user base is largely inactive because of the poor economy and this is affects sales.

    Apple’s COO, Tim Cook, recently said that the computer market is only 10% Enterprise purchases while the consumer market is 50% of computers sold. Apple is focused on the upper end of the consumer market, but it also services its niche markets in education, graphics and design.

    Apple is interested in Small to Medium sized business sales. But, Government and Big Business sales are very demanding , yet they are too small a market for Apple to currently bother with. These groups are where the bulk of the Windows user base resides.

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