Mac Market Grows by One-Third

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Sunday, July 06, 2008 9:15 AM PDT

Apple Inc.'s OS market share has increased by nearly 32% in the last year, according to data collected by an Internet metrics company.

Last month, Apple's Mac OS X accounted for 7.94% of the operating systems powering computers that accessed the 40,000 Web sites Net Applications Inc. monitors for its clients, the company reported last week. A year ago, Mac OS X's usage share stood at 6.03%.

Also showing gains in June were Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista and Linux, which climbed 8% and 18%, respectively, to end the month accounting for 16.14% and 0.88% of the online OS market.

Those gains came at the expense of Windows XP, and to a lesser extent, Windows 2000. Net Applications' data showed that Windows XP's share dropped from 72.12% to 71.2%, a decline of nearly a full percentage point. Windows 2000, meanwhile, continued its long slide, dropping to 2.11% of the online operating system share during June.

Monday marked the first major retirement milestone of Windows XP as Microsoft stopped offering licenses to most big-name computer makers and halted sales of boxed copies to retailers.

While Windows Vista's 256% increase in market share over the last 12 months significantly outpaced Mac OS X's gains, Windows' overall June total was down 2.45 percentage points from the year before, indicating that Vista was replacing XP, not adding to Microsoft's share.

Net Applications' operating system share and trend data is available online.

Sponsored Resource:Are you ready for virtualization? Try the sever assessment tool.
Sponsored Resource:Learn more about ultra light notebooks from Asus and the best warranty in the industry.
Sponsored Resource:Thinking about a new Laptop? Lenovo has models to meet everyone's needs.
Sponsored Resource:Get the truth about remanufactured ink. Learn more from HP.
Sponsored Resource:Six smart ways to grow small business IT

Recommend this story?
Vote Yes
Vote No
0 Yes
0 No
Email
Comment

Community Comments

News For Your Business

More News

PC World's Marketplace

PC World's Free Whitepapers

Operating Systems News

Vista - September 6, 2008
Microsoft's Renewed Vista Strategy The software giant is learning and changing in regard to Vista's stops and starts, Vista guru reports.
Operating Systems - September 5, 2008
The Bill and Jerry Show I wasn't anywhere near a TV Thursday night, so I missed the debut of Microsoft's much-ballyhooed ad campaign featuring Bill...
Operating Systems - September 4, 2008
Gain Keyboard, Mouse Control in 10.5 Screen Sharing One of the things I really like about OS X 10.5 is the built-in screen sharing tool. With multiple machines in our home...
Linux / Unix - September 1, 2008
Intel Buys British Linux Developer Opened Hand The acquisition adds to Intel's arsenal of Linux development projects for mobile internet devices.

Latest Expert Blogs

Glenn Fleishman on Hardware - August 15, 2008 10:11 AM
Wake Me When You Need Me, Says Intel Intel's Remote Wake lets a computer listen intelligently for a signal to rouse from sleep mode and carry out an activity.
Neil McAllister on Software - August 19, 2008 6:04 PM
Microsoft Sends Up Trial Balloons for Windows 7 While Vista takes a beating in the press, Microsoft seems increasingly willing to disclose details of its forthcoming OS.
Erik Larkin on the Web - September 04, 2008 12:53 PM
Zoho Adds Google Docs-like File Management Better late than never - and the Zoho version offers nice features Google Docs doesn't have.

All Blogs

Featured Resources

Premier Content From Our Sponsors

HP Ink Center You don't need a big budget to produce high quality marketing materials. Click here for more info...
CDW Virtualization Center What is Virtualization and how can it help you save money? Click here for more info...