Mac OS share stagnates, Google gains

Apple may be losing its shine, according a new report that shows a slight decline in Mac OS usage on the internet. Despite a growing market-share of Intel-based Macs, Net Applications released August data that shows that Mac OS marketshare was down ever-so slightly to 4.33 percent. In December 2005, total Mac OS usage market share was 4.35 percent. The difference may be near-neglible (and within the margin of error, which was not provided), but the company says that the new data reverses a previous trend that showed consistent increases. "While this slight dip may not seem to be a cause for concern to most observers, the fact that Mac usage was steadily growing until this year's stagnation may be indicative of larger Apple problems," the company said. "Does this spell disaster for Apple? Only time will tell. They do have a history of bouncing back from tough times. Apple also have several new initiatives coming, including a new feature movie site comparable to iTunes and the iPhone which will combine the iPod with a cell phone."

However, the data did show that Intel-based Mac usage is growing quickly and currently has 0.62 precent usage market share. Because the company did not provide data on collection or methodology, the reliability of the study was unknown. AppleInsider notes that the same release from NetApplications, which sells website analytics software, provided incorrect data on iPod sales.

Separately, the same data showed that Google continues its search engine dominance with nearly 50.5 percent marketshare, while MSN dropped from 10.4 percent in August 2005 to 6.6 percent in August of this year.

"Yahoo has held steady for 12 months ending with a 12.92% of the market share. Users are moving towards Google for its search engine as it appears that Google Adsense has increased steadily over the past year from 2.56% to 3.12% in August, 2006," the company said. "More and more people are clicking on the sponsored ads to find what they are looking for. AOL has dropped significantly from 2.98% in August, 2005 to 1.03% in August, 2006. Ask.com has dropped from 1.18% of the market share to .99% in August 2006. Google continues it's dominance in the Search Market Share but the search engine that appears least affected at this moment is Yahoo."

Filed under: industry