MacOS market share in February 2009

[skaertus]

Net Applications has just released its numbers on the market share of operating systems. See here:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10

It looks like MacOS market share in February was a little bit down from December and January. It is 9.61% in February (in January, it was 9.93% and, in December, it was 9.63%). Still, despite this small decline, MacOS is much more popular than it was a year ago. What are your opinions on this?

 

[Sky Blue]

What's a MacOS?

 

[mkrishnan]

I wonder if there are seasonal changes in the Windows/OS X marketshare mix in the same way that there are seasonal patterns to Apple sales. I would tend for that reason to find the year-over-year / SPIT comparison more compelling than the month-over-month comparison and tend to write off the recent drop in OS X share for now (unless it were to continue repeating itself).

Some other interesting things I saw in there...

- The continued chipping away of IE market share by FF, Safari, and Chrome is impressive. In the almost 12 months (April 08 -> Feb 09) IE declined from 74.8% to 67.5%, with FF gaining about 4%, Safari gaining 2.2%, and Chrome gaining just over 1%. If Chrome establishes itself and this becomes a four way fight, we might see IE go underneath 50% in about 18-24 months....

- The increase in iPhone browser share from 0.15% to 0.48% of all web traffic is pretty impressive, too. WM declined slightly in the same time frame. "Other" traffic gained quite impressively, too, though -- making more headway actually than the iPhone (although other isn't just one thing or a homogenous group of things). It will be interesting to see if any of the iPhone competitors that also emphasize browsing experience can pull out to establish themselves as a line item. If I understand their methodology, they rank the six highest ones (Win, Mac, Linux, iPhone, WM, and PSX), and so there isn't any single phone web platform that beats out the PSX numbers at this time, which are some 1/12th the iPhone volume. It'll also be interesting to see where the iPhone goes from here, as 2009 will represent a year with the 3G iPhone available in most of the major markets Apple targets (whereas 2008 could probably still be called a rollout year).

- There were also small but still relatively impressive gains for Linux, which I think is impressive considering that, by mid 2008, the marketshare of Netbooks shipping with Linux was already starting to tank in favor of Windows.

 

[skaertus]

I wonder if there are seasonal changes in the Windows/OS X marketshare mix in the same way that there are seasonal patterns to Apple sales. I would tend for that reason to find the year-over-year / SPIT comparison more compelling than the month-over-month comparison and tend to write off the recent drop in OS X share for now (unless it were to continue repeating itself).

I think so. Not just sales. In February, more people use their computers at work than in December or in January. And Macs are more used at home. If you look at last year's market share, the use of MacOS also declined in February.

- The continued chipping away of IE market share by FF, Safari, and Chrome is impressive. In the almost 12 months (April 08 -> Feb 09) IE declined from 74.8% to 67.5%, with FF gaining about 4%, Safari gaining 2.2%, and Chrome gaining just over 1%. If Chrome establishes itself and this becomes a four way fight, we might see IE go underneath 50% in about 18-24 months....

I don't really know about it. IMHO, Explorer is the worst of the four web browsers (I don't know which one of the other three is the best). But lots of people won't just install new web browsers on their machines, they'll just use what's already installed. If the EU forces Microsoft to let users choose which web browser they want, then perhaps the usage of IE Explorer declines steeply.

- The increase in iPhone browser share from 0.15% to 0.48% of all web traffic is pretty impressive, too. WM declined slightly in the same time frame. "Other" traffic gained quite impressively, too, though -- making more headway actually than the iPhone (although other isn't just one thing or a homogenous group of things). It will be interesting to see if any of the iPhone competitors that also emphasize browsing experience can pull out to establish themselves as a line item. If I understand their methodology, they rank the six highest ones (Win, Mac, Linux, iPhone, WM, and PSX), and so there isn't any single phone web platform that beats out the PSX numbers at this time, which are some 1/12th the iPhone volume. It'll also be interesting to see where the iPhone goes from here, as 2009 will represent a year with the 3G iPhone available in most of the major markets Apple targets (whereas 2008 could probably still be called a rollout year).

These numbers are not exact. They are restricted to the people who actually visit websites of Net Applications partners. But definitely iPhone is rapidly growing, while Windows Mobile is, at best, stuck.

- There were also small but still relatively impressive gains for Linux, which I think is impressive considering that, by mid 2008, the marketshare of Netbooks shipping with Linux was already starting to tank in favor of Windows.

Linux is actually growing, but not so fast as MacOS. It has become more usable in the last years, and there are plenty of low-cost machines being sold equipped with Linux. In 2004-2005, Linux had about 0.2-0.3% of market share; and now it's over 0.8%. In percentage terms, it is quite impressive; the increase is actually similar to MacOS (which had about 3-4% in 2004-2005 and has 9-10% now).

 

[zap2]

I'm surprised how low some of the smartphone OSes are...Symbian market share is huge, I would have though that that number advantage would result in more internet users(although forced data on iPhone might have something to do with that)

 

[mkrishnan]

(although forced data on iPhone might have something to do with that)

Essentially, this is tracking actual use of the web rather than ability -- the running theory has been that, to date, the iPhone's web use has been so much higher than everyone else because it was the first phone with a usable web browser, and not primarily for any other reason (like forced data or the fact that it's a single model with relatively high unit sales).

I think that it still seems to be the message that, although many BB's, Symbians, and WM devices are deployed out there, people are not using the web on them much, whereas iPhone users are.

In 2004-2005, Linux had about 0.2-0.3% of market share; and now it's over 0.8%. In percentage terms, it is quite impressive; the increase is actually similar to MacOS (which had about 3-4% in 2004-2005 and has 9-10% now).

This is very true -- the percentage gain for Linux is very impressive. That was what I had been trying to say, but I definitely did not say it clearly. Just the percentage gain in the April 08 - Feb 09 time is very impressive.

 

[clevin]

as a routine reminder

netapplication samples more data in US, and the survey's uncertainty covers most of the variations , + or -.

 

[mkrishnan]

By the way, here's another article from today regarding the Mobile aspect of market share...

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/report-iphone-takes-23-of-mobile-web-in-february.ars

Included is a more detailed pie chart of mobile devices only:

Besides the powerful showing by the iPhone, I think the second most fascinating thing about this is that, despite its extremely brief and currently limited market career, the Android already is showing US usage rates at the same level as Symbian, which has been on the US market for years....