9/19/2006
Is Apple Losing OS Share?
Apple is riding high lately. Their transition to the Intel chip has been smooth and the popularity of both iTunes and the iPod has been translating into computer sales.But according to the Net Applications newsletter I got in my inbox yesterday, the apocalypse is about strike at Apple. What are the signs of the Apple apocalypse? They cite accounting irregularities (Wall Street didn't care), the mass recall of notebook batteries (it was Sony's fault), and a 0.02% drop in OS usage. Yep, just a little 0.02% drop.
Here's a passage from their newsletter:
"Mac Intel OS usage is growing quickly, and currently has 0.62 percent usage market share, but overall Mac OS usage is slightly down.. Back in December 2005 total Mac OS usage market share was 4.35 percent, but August 2006 numbers show total Mac OS market share down to 4.33 percent."So how did Net Applications measure this 0.02% drop? They have an expensive web traffic analyzing service for webmasters called HitsLink. I used to use HitsLink for MethodShop.com but have since switched to a less expensive service with more features. Hummm... could I be the source of the 0.02% drop? Because of all the iPod related articles on our website we tend to have a higher Mac user base. Maybe the 0.02% drop could be attributed to people going on vacation and not using their computer that month. Or what about the wave of blackouts in America this summer. Yes I'm being sarcastic, but can you blame me? It's only a 0.02% drop.
Besides the fact that Net Applications is all jacked up over a 0.02% drop, can you really match up marketshare (computer sales) with visitor statistics solely based on HitsLink subscribers? No. Web usage by only HitsLink subscribers is just a small random sampling and has nothing to do with overall market share. Maybe Net Applications should offer to share their data with some other web traffic analyzing services before they declare the next 0.02% apocalypse.
Also, how credible is Net Applications? In the same September 18th newsletter they mistakenly reported that "iPod sales peaked at over 12 million units for the 4th quarter of 2005, but have stumbled to 8.5 million and 8.1 million units the most recent two quarters..." 12 million is close, but wrong. In Q1 of 2006 Apple sold over 14 million iPods.
One last thing. The newsletter also reports that 1% of web users are still using Windows ME. Those crazy backwards bastards. God bless 'em.
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What a load of feces. I’m a consultant and see Windows users buying Macs like crazy nowadays. At least 50% of my business is Windows users switching to Macintosh.
This is bogus just like the supposed virsuses and WiFi crack. Another feeble attempt at attacking Apple while they’re kicking ass and taking names…
This is bogus just like the supposed virsuses and WiFi crack. Another feeble attempt at attacking Apple while they’re kicking ass and taking names…
I remember one study using website visitor statistics showing how low Mac penetration is, and when people started looking at which websites were represented in the study, it was discovered that a majority of them were targeted at PC users.
Now that Apple's PowerPC -to- Intel transition is pretty much wrapped up it'll be interesting to see over the next few years how things shake out.
Now that Apple's PowerPC -to- Intel transition is pretty much wrapped up it'll be interesting to see over the next few years how things shake out.
How about the fact that many Mac users have Safari set to display a fake user agent? In my case (as I'm sure it would be for many otherS) I've got Safari set to pretend to be 'Windows MSIE 6' in order to be allowed to visit sites that claim not to work with other browsers (though they often do) and lock them out. Are Net Applications able to work around this or is it skewing their numbers?
Gartner has released preliminary market share numbers for 3Q 2006 (calendar, Apple's financial 4Q) which show Apple seeing substantial industry growth at 1.5%. Apple now ships 6.1% of all U.S. "PCs", 4th in the industry behind Gateway (6.4%), HP (23%), and Dell (32.1%). Apple did not place in the top-5 in worldwide PC shipments, so that data was not available.
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