Mac Installed Base Hits 6.6% in September

The installed base of Apple (AAPL) computers rose nearly 6.7% in the month of September to 6.6% of personal computers, driven largely by a one-month 12.7% increase in Intel-based Macs, according to market research released today by Net Applications Inc.

During the same period, machines running Microsoft (MSFT) Windows actually lost share, despite a sharp one-month growth in Windows Vista numbers.

Net Applications samples operating system data from visitors to a network of some 40,000 websites scattered around the world, a method that tends to skew results toward computers that are heavily used and away from those that are gathering dust. It is less a measure of market share than of active installed base.

By Net Applications' reckoning, more than 90% of the computers on the Internet are running some flavor of Windows while 6.6% are running a version of OS X. Nearly 3.4% are categorized as "other," which includes 0.81% Linux and 0.07% iPhone (up from 0.05% in August).

Among mainstream operating systems, Vista was the fastest-growing, up more than 15% for the month, although Windows' numbers overall were down slightly. 

Linux and iPhone both showed double-digit gains, up better than 18% and 28%, respectively. The iPhone data were taken too early to reflect the effect of the software update last week that rendered unlocked phones inoperable.

The table below, derived from Net Applications' research, summarizes its August and September results. For more detail, you can go directly to their website here. For their web browser numbers, see Safari Gains Ground in Browser Wars.
 

Comments

[Jim]

>>>During the same period, machines running Microsoft (MSFT) Windows may have actually lost share, despite a sharp one-month growth in Windows Vista numbers.<<<

Either it lost shares or it didn't!

GO AHEAD AND SPIN IT ELMER!

-----------------------------

By Net Applications' reckoning, more than 90% of the computers on the Internet are running some flavor of Windows while 6.6% are running a version of OS X. Nearly 3.4% are categorized as "other," which includes 0.81% Linux and 0.07% iPhone (up from 0.05% in August).

And I thought iPhones run on OSX.
Go figure.

[tom gaughan]

Goods news for apple.

[I'm not Jim]

This entire article is based on a broken source. The Net Applications report is compiled from the number of visitors to sites using its web statistics service, and the company gives no information that justifies extrapolating that data to the installed base of 'net-connected computers.

Other more comprehensive measures of installed base tend to show Macintoshes at closer to fifteen or twenty percent.

ex ped: Pointer to more comprehensive measures? --Philip Elmer-DeWitt

[Constable Odo]

Wow! If this keeps up, Apple OS might pass Windows XP in percentage points by the time the sun turns into a red giant or a dwarf star. We're on a roll. C'mon Apple.

[Anime Girl]

This is fantastic news! It means the iPod users are switching to the Mac. I was at the apple store just the other day and met a former dell owner who said "he had had enough of that..." I hope more will follow suit.

[zahadum]

the guys at network applications are mis-catagorizing the iphone.

it belongs in the break-out under osx, not as a seperate entity, becuase it is running os/x mobile ... and it the browser is called safari mobile.

so it should read 'OS X - AMD'.

i appreciate the rationale for trying to define devices by function rather than by structure -- but in the end i thin is is less informative.

especially if/when apple introduce an 'ipad' slate computer soon, which will also be running osx ...

and then there is the appletv, also running osx - what about if/when apple opens it up as a 'webtv' type of platform which can support web browsing on the home entertainment system's HD display?!

if the guys at network applications dont appreciate that all of these apple products are computers, running osx, with a safari browser, then they will defeat the whole idea of aggregating these stats in the first place: which is to provide the web community with a rough indication of (browser) platform size, and hence act as single of how to allocate resources -- to support non-standard (web) technology such as msie or to support industry standard (w3c) technology such as safari!?

a rose is a rose is a rose - by any other name.

[zahadum]

* of course the typo should read "OS X - ARM" not "AMD" :-)

* um, and that would be "acting as a SIGNAL" not a single :-)

3am.

time for zzzz.

[dblwyo]

I'mnotjim - could you follow up a little with some data ? Very interesting. My heart wants to go with it but...

In general is any data available and could we getr another entry looking at share curves over time. I'm particularly curious to compare & contrast Vista's adoption rate to XP's and maybe 95's.

[anon]

For "comprehensive installed base" measurements that don't rely on a limited sample of web site visits, try looking at software purchases. Here's a page with lots of links:

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5933/

The consensus a few years ago was more like 10-12%, not quite "fifteen or twenty", though there's been a few years of both increasing market share and installed base since then.

Estimates of useful system lifetime regularly give Macintoshes about a factor of 2.5 advantage over Windows PCs. A Mac market share of 6% and a Windows share of 90% implies a Mac installed base of more than 14%. That overstates the case somewhat because the market share was lower in the past. It also ignores Linux completely, so it could actually be off in the other direction.