tech industry

09/19/2006, 10:00am, EDT

Tuesday, September 19th

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."


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Stupid study
0
09/19, 10:32am, EDT
Web browser stats do not correlate to marketshare of an operating system.
Mac Elite
Joined Mar 2001
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virutal machines
0
09/19, 10:36am, EDT
With certain websites requiring IE and the availablity of virtual machines, a Mac user may well show up as a Windows user. As the previous poster said, web stats do not correlate to OS u sage
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Oct 2000
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seasonality
0
09/19, 10:39am, EDT
If you look more closely at the OS stats, you'll notice a seasonal decline in MacOS usage in the summer months. My pet theory is that this is due to schools being closed, and more home users being on vacation away from their computers.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Apr 1999
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Melodrama
0
09/19, 10:42am, EDT
"Does this spell disaster for Apple? Only time will tell. They do have a history of bouncing back from tough times."

Another APPLE IS DYING messenger. Why would it spell disaster? Is there any indication that Apple is contracting, rather than expanding?

Silly reporter, stick to the numbers. Leave the interpretation to the objective analysts.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined May 1999
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pure nonsense
0
09/19, 10:48am, EDT
Not only is the above statment correct that browser stats mean nothing in terms of market share, but Net Applications' reports seem to be far from reliable... they didn't even get sales figures for the iPod right in the same article. This is aside from the fact that they, and most of the sites from which they gather their data, are IIS and often not Mac-friendly.

Less than scientific data at best.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
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Search Stats
0
09/19, 11:09am, EDT
Ask seems to think thier market share is growing (up to 3%), and other survey's have Yahoo at 23% of all searches. This is a huge diffrence from the stats shown here. I would look at these as suspect.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
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search stats
0
09/19, 1:10pm, EDT
I would like to see the break out of browsers attached to time of day. While I'm at work I have to use a PC, when at home I use my Mac. Look at the recent/popular posts to Del.icio.us and you'll see quite a few Mac sites saved.
Forum Regular
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boot camp
0
09/19, 1:47pm, EDT
Maybe the Mac OS usage on the internet is going down, because people with macs are browsing with their macs booted up in windows part of the time now.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
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non scientific survey
0
09/19, 2:10pm, EDT
and bad correlation of data
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined Oct 2001
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JEB
= Productivity Better
0
09/19, 4:49pm, EDT
Well, I found what I needed quicker on a Mac. Whilst my friends on thier PCs were stuck in IE-browserland, my web-surfing tasks were well beyond complete.

I even had time to make coffee, enjoy some iTunes, work on a presentation, toggle to Mail, check out some iPhotos imported from my camera . . . the list goes on.

Marketshare-shmarketshare.
Junior Member
Joined May 2001
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