October Internet use: Vista up, Mac down
How do you explain this one?
The monthly Market Share survey from Net Applications, which had reported steady increases for the Mac OS in the previous two months and sharp growth for the iPhone — including a 57% surge in August — showed a very different picture in the October report issued overnight Saturday.
In October, iPhone growth slowed to 3.12% (down from 6.67% in September) and the Mac’s share actually fell, down 0.24% from September. (Linux was particularly hard hit, down nearly 22% for the month; see charts below.)
Windows, meanwhile, got a little bump — up 0.19% — thanks to a healthy 5.24% jump in Vista’s share.
How did this happen?
The first thing to be said about these results is that Net Applications’ “market share” report doesn’t actually measure share of market as a percentage of revenue or unit sales. That’s the business Gartner and IDC are in. And in Gartner and IDC’s latest reports, Apple’s (AAPL) share of the U.S. market had grown to 9.5% and 9.1% respectively, largely at the expense of the HP (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) (see here).
What Net Applications does measure — based on browser data from some 160 million visits to websites operated by Net Applications’ clients — is the extent to which users of each operating system are hanging out on the Internet.
In other words, what the Web metrics firm’s latest data show is that in October, Windows users — and Vista users in particular — were coming online at a faster rate than Mac users. This despite the fact that Mac sales grew 21% worldwide last quarter according to Apple, and roughly 30% in the U.S. according to Gartner and IDC.
So what was it about October that drew Vista users to the Web in greater proportion than Mac users? Could it have something to do with Microsoft’s (MSFT) $300 million ad campaign for Windows? Was it PC users obsessively tracking poll numbers in the U.S. presidential race? Could it be related somehow to the meltdown of the global financial markets?
While you ponder that, here are summaries of the latest Net Applications reports, broken down first by OS and then by different versions of those operating systems. To see the full results, click here.
Has anyone noticed how Windows users don’t no the write words to right sometimes? When comparing Apple and Microsoft market share, this sometimes makes it hard four them too work out witch won one.
Posted By Mike Lazarus, Melbourne, Australia
Yeah, there spelling and use of words is sometimes not good. Yet they all drive nice cars that they payed for with money form the businesses were they run PC and not Mac. The PC has it’s problem but its a real business machine and the Mac is not, thats why they can make so much money as businessman.
Posted By timboM, Madison, WI
Seriously? Do I even have to point all incorrect wording in those to comments?
Jimbo…erad the comments before you post buddy. Mac User was responding to Paul’s comment about driving a Yugo.
Reading these comments sometimes remind me of an English Football match. “You better like my team or I’m gonna kick your arse!”
Silly article. Mac fell .02%., not much compared to Linux falling .2%. Windows gained .17%. This would mean that people are shifting to Windows from Linux, not Mac.
Yeah, there spelling and use of words is sometimes not good. Yet they all drive nice cars that they payed for with money form the businesses were they run PC and not Mac. The PC has it’s problem but its a real business machine and the Mac is not, thats why they can make so much money as businessman.
Has anyone noticed how Windows users don’t no the write words to right sometimes? When comparing Apple and Microsoft market share, this sometimes makes it hard four them too work out witch won one.
Oh, and one more thing - anyone think the decrease in time on-line by Mac users might relate to better adaptive functioning in this calamitous economy, relative to PC users? Less time on-line, more time in the real world….
It’s 11:30 p.m. now, and I’m going to bed!
I use a Mac at home, where I can access patients’ medical records, conduct stock trades, send business and personal e-mails with powerpoint presentation attachments, etc., etc., etc. Quite sufficient for home business and personal needs. And MUCH better functionality than the PCs at work.
The PCs at work are slower, more cumbersome, less efficient. Finding a single file (one I’ve created, a software file, or other) can be like finding a needle in a haystack. The computer is slow - one of the most irritating things about working on computers is when they don’t keep up anywhere near your speed of thought. The medical record software on the PC is torture in this respect.
Sometimes, however, I admit that word processing on the Mac’s OS X can be a bit of a pain, as MS Word is not part of the standard package. (Though I remember learning how to use MS Word on my old Apple Macintosh Classic!)
Oh, and I drive a Prius.
And anyone who thinks Mac users or Prius drivers think they’re “better” human beings may have an inferiority complex of their own.
(And, Tonto, NY, NY - didn’t you just resort to “name calling” yourself?)
Only a narrow minded person would say that you can’t do “real work” on a Mac. That would be you, Disillusioned Mac Owner. Your arguments don’t hold water. If you can’t do your work on a Mac, that is one thing. But to say you can’t do “real business work” shows you don’t know what you are talking about.
Further, to state that the market share for Macs hasn’t moved much in 20 years is just about the height of ignorance. Mac market share was stuck in the 4%-5% range for a decade. It’s now up to a little over 9%, and growing.
I laugh at your comments about being for graphics and entertainment. The old argument used to be “no one will buy a Mac because they aren’t good for games.” Now it’s changed. Check the reviews of Leopard and of the most recent Macs in all of the major pubs - including the PC centric pubs. All say that Macs are far more productive and are fitting very well into corporate environments.
Finally, I’m sure that your mom is very proud of you buying an overpriced and underperforming Lexus with cash, but that doesn’t matter a pinch of s**t as far as computers go. Just shows you know how to waste money. Take a few bucks and get educated on computers instead of overpaying for a car.
Just to add a little context, if you look at the full year chart, you’ll see a small drop in Mac OS usage is common, from month to month. The long-term trend is strongly up, but the odd month here or there may be slightly down and a 0.02% drop is “slightly”. Linux is the surprise, as it dropped 0.2%. My percentages are absolute share numbers, not percentage growth, which seems to confuse people, if one is not clear.
I mean where was the report of Mac OS share drop back in July? It dropped 0.18%, far larger than a 0.02% drop. How about the 0.1% April drop? Or the 0.09% February drop? All of these drops were far larger than the one in October, so why make a fuss now? It’s just noise in the signal. Look at last year, 2007, oh my god, Mac OS share dropped in October, as well! A whole 0.05%. There were also drops in March, June and July. What’s the fuss about?
ex ped: “I mean where was the report of Mac OS share drop back in July? It dropped 0.18%, far larger than a 0.02% drop. How about the 0.1% April drop? Or the 0.09% February drop?”
Apple 2.0 covered the February drop here. We were on vacation for the July dip. Sorry.
“If that was the real reason, the irony of the situation would be overwhelming: after all of those Vista-bashing commercials people choosing are Windows over OS X”
I’m new to Mac. I bought an iMac because I like the look, and it’s easier for my wife to use. And I did install and run Vista on it because I’m more productive using Vista (honestly, I am new to Mac). I guess many windows users moving start buying Macs because now they can use both OS’s.
Remember this? BetaMAX vs VCR? Which on one? VCR Why? MORE titles! Compare to this, Mac vs PC. Guess which one has MORE titles? That’s right, PC. Apple kept their OS architecture a secret for years while Windows writers were encouraged to right software for PC’s. Sound familiar? MAC’s are doomed to the same success as BetaMAX if they don’t change their hoighty-toighty opinion of themselves and their opinion that they are “better” - they need to become more attractive as a solution to more people. BTW, name calling people with differing opinions from your own only reduces further the validity of your supporting evidence.
Dear FreeRange, that’s exactly my point - Mac’s used to be business machines but now development for business apps are done for Windows first. I could care less which one I use, I just want the machine with the most software options and best cost to value ratio, and unfortunately for Apple that isn’t a Mac. Don’t blame me, just look at the market share and how it hasn’t moved much at all over 20+/- years! Apple is missing the needs of the big spenders.
The MS trolls are out in force… I guess they don’t know that the early days of excel’s development was done first for macs, and most of the truly innovative features where introduced in excel for the macs first by MS. Macs are absolutely business machines! Anytime you have hardware/software combinations that run more reliably with less downtime, are easier to use, require less training and no hardware upgrades when the next OS comes out, they have the advantage in business… Many are now figuring that out.
Oh Paul, sorry I forgot, I drive a Lexus, paid for in cash from the business I run on my company PC’s. You see it really doesn’t matter to me - I need to get work done. If Apple can do it better than PC’s then I’d use Apple!
Hey Paul, your comments clearly demonstrate the lack of understanding of the corporate issues surrounding the acceptance of Apple for real business work. John is correct, Apple is optimized for graphics and entertainment. These are niche markets and not really useful for traditional business work. Any Mac user can experience this for themselves - just try to get a version of applications for a vertical business market for the Mac - 99 times out of 100 you’ll find them for the PC but not Apple - fat lot of good that has if you only have Apple equipment! “Expensive” includes the overall cost of ownership experience and is what real businesses use to decide Mac vs PC. Until Apple understands these types of things they’ll be forever discarded as “not cost effective” for the buyers who have the big money to spend.
The disallusioned Mac User is correct. I can’t even believe anyone would think Apple is a business machine. It’s a graphics and entertainment machine. Again, keep trying to make the argument. Let me see, can Mac “run a database of scientific calcs like Windows. Oh, come on. Apple needs Microsoft not the other way around. And, Linux,has no place in the game. No one can answer Linux issues without sending you on a path of 9000 trys without a solution. In other words there’s no centralized support. Sorry for the tangent. I find Apple people so arrogant there Apple machines. There good for photoshop and family pictures and some good Hollywood movies.
Every time I see one of these “overpriced” Mac arguments, I always want to ask the writer what kind of car they’re driving. A Yugo?
It just proves to me how much mediocrity exists in the world.
It’s simple in 2007 the same thing happened, a decline in october … and the same remarks of doom and gloom appeared
There are 1000 plausible explanations. At this point, however, it is just noise. The differences are so slight as to be meaningless. They will have meaning only if the change becomes a trend with more significant change in values.
BTW - It does NOT measure internet traffic - only traffic to the customers’ sites.
Hey RPM in Lansing, MI. I imagine you’ll be hoping for a job selling fries in a few more months.
Mac = overpriced and ineffective for real work. Most applications of any use are developed for Windows, then rarely ported to Apple because the user base isn’t big enough to justify the expense. If Apply wants to make any real headway they have to somehow convince the corporate world to buy their machines. Having Windows run on Apple helps but if you are a corporate buyer why would you want to pay extra for the hardware to run your current software? Just doesn’t make sense!
Mac’s tend to cost 3 times the rate that a standard windows based pc does…this is a quality issue more than anything. An Imac runs 1500 and a cheap dell runs 300, it doesn’t take a genius in this economy to figure out where the cash strapped are going to go. Mac kicks windows arse in everything, but price. Mac makes no budget pc, you get quality and stability, at a price.
A snapshot of a snapshot is a blurry image.
Could you, PED, show 6 and 12 month trends ? That would be much more meaningful IMO.
These data do not include the margin of error (standard deviation), so there is no way to tell if they are statistically meaningful.
Putting the Mac “decline” in context, a change of 0.07% out of 160 million web site visits is 112,000 page views. Sounds less than negligible to me.
For example, the World Series was held in October…if one major site related to that required a MSFT operating system/broswer, that *alone* would skew the numbers right there. Plus, as others have mentioned, savvy Mac users can change their User-Agent strings to pretend to be MSFT….I know I have to do that with our company’s credit card processor, for example.
Another “explanation”, if one is even warranted by this statistically meaningless data, could be as simple as an HTML injection trojan/virus such as Sinowal. If a virus/trojan was configured that it sends an extra request each time an infected machine visits a certain web site, one could easily imagine it generating tens of thousands of spurious requests each day. And those would all record as MSFT page views, of course, because there is still not a single wild Mac virus, Trojan, adware, or malware.
I just see it as the iPhone “cannibalizing” desktop Safari time, just as it “cannibalized” sales of the iPod. Often at night when I need to surf, rather then powering up my MacBook Pro, I just launch Safari from my iPhone without leaving the comfort of the couch. Since iPhone sales are rocketing, I can imagine there are more and more individuals doing so.
iPhone is separately reported by NetApps. It went from 0.33% share to 0.34%, so iPhone you can’t blame iPhone cannibalization for the figures reported in this article.
Mark.
Also useful to note how much catching up Windows Vista has to do versus Mac’s latest OS.
Vista was released Jan-07 and still has just 22% of all Windows users (68% are still on XP).
Leopard was released Oct-07 and already has 72% of all Mac users.
Mark.
Looking at figures from both charts, the article could be titled “XP and Windows 2000 Internet Usage Down Almost 10% in October”.
Windows increase of 0.25% would be from Mac users and all those old Windows 2000 users getting new PCs - installing software and updates.
It would be helpful if the author accurately presented the data NetApps published.
AUTHOR SAYS:
Windows from Sep 90.23% to Oct 90.46% (increase of (0.25%)
Mac from Sep 8.28% to Oct 8.21% (decrease of 0.85%)
NETAPPS NUMBERS ARE:
Windows from Sep 90.29% to Oct 90.46 (increase of 0.19%)
Mac from Sep 8.23% to Oct 8.21% (decrease of 0.24%)
I also note the author summed all Windows versions including Windows Mobile, but didn’t include iPhone share in the Mac numbers. If he did, the numbers would read as follows:
Windows from Sep 90.29% to Oct 90.46 (increase of 0.19%)
Apple from Sep 8.55% to Oct 8.54% (decrease of 0.12%)
Let’s have a fair debate.
Cheers,
Mark.
ex ped: Net Applications numbers are a moving target, frequently updated. I’ve redone the charts with the numbers as of Sunday a.m.
“Macs are now running Vista and that makes the Windows numbers more favorable. But that also explains why Apple are selling more Macs.”
If that was the real reason, the irony of the situation would be overwhelming: after all of those Vista-bashing commercials people choosing are Windows over OS X. Running overpriced OS on overpriced hardware. As they say, there’s a sucker born every minute.
I just see it as the iPhone “cannibalizing” desktop Safari time, just as it “cannibalized” sales of the iPod. Often at night when I need to surf, rather then powering up my MacBook Pro, I just launch Safari from my iPhone without leaving the comfort of the couch. Since iPhone sales are rocketing, I can imagine there are more and more individuals doing so.
Obviously, Window users were downloading fixes while Mac users were doing other more productive tasks. You see, while Window users were still waiting for the computer to start, Mac folks already accomplished their tasks and were out to the beach.
It must hurt having to write something positive about Vista instead of the usual lies, outdated snippets and half truths, huh?
The real reason is Apple is fast approaching its ceiling. No surprise there.
Let me give the BEST explaination -
Macs are now running Vista and that makes the Windows numbers more favorable. But that also explains why Apple are selling more Macs.
About the iPhone number.
It really comes down to the days of the month. Since there are only 30 days measured, they lop one day off October it seems to keep things at 30.
Anyhow, September has 1 more Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, than October. October has 1 more Monday and Tuesday.
What effect does this have, well, if you have been looking at the day-to-day charts, you’d see that iPhone usage is slow on Mondays/Tuesdays, and picks up on Thursdays and Fridays, peaking on the weekend. In other words, the very fact that September has 1 more Thursday and Friday, than October which has 1 more Monday and Tuesday will skew the results.
Any way you look at it, it’s a lose - lose for Apple.
If there are many PCs in Universities skewing the numbers, then Mac is losing the battle to flood the education systems with their product.
If it’s genuine from the growth of Vista, then Apple is losing the advertising battle. I find their latest add showing PC pouring all it’s financial resources into advertising humerous - completely the opposite of the realities between Apple and PC. Without Apple’s great advertising, it’s mediocre products would be nothing.
More corporate Windows users were looking for jobs and checking their melting 401k during work hours.
I want to point out that when using the Safari browser on a PC, MAC, or iPhone, and you hit the back or forward buttons it reloads the page creating another hit when it is actually not a hit. IE does not do this. This could be skewing the numbers away fom IE. Thoughts?
you guys are close - but it’s simple. Most universities have tons of windows machines in libraries or other computer labs - all free for student use. At my university students get in groups and go to the labs and work on projects together, regardless of weather they have their own computer.
School started in mid september. Assignments due early October - bam - easy as that
Many users of non-Microsoft browsers have their browser identify as some MS version. This is a result of the foolish web site owners who make their site’s behavior friendly to only the products of MS.
Simple. The internet is too complicated for Mac users, so they’ve finally given up. Back to tasks more their speed, like asking “would you like fries with that?”.
The Vista users are troubleshooting Vista online. :0
The could have been a huge surge in corporate users surfing in general - between the bank meltdowns and the election. But that sounds overly apple apologetic. I don’t like to hear these numbers!
Another explanation:
The mac has reached another inflection point, and many windows users are looking for the best deals on Apple computers :)
Nefarious robohits. Scripts to make hits and drive up the numbers, since Vista really does suck and there’s no rational argument otherwise.
Hahahah — “students are studying not surfing”??? You clearly have not been on a college campus then. A big mac increase in back to school buys should actually increase OS X net view market share. Vista adoption is simply occuring faster now after WinXP is basically not available and Vista comes default on new PCs.
All those Windows users are spending hours on the web looking for support and solutions for all the peripherals that don’t work under Vista.
Vista users finally figured out how to connect to the Internet?
Simple. Big mac increase in back to school buys. Students are studying not surfing. Meanwhile corporate surfing is on the rise.
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
Militant Apple Fanboi’s are out in force again. Probably linked this post in the many blogs that indulge these iBoi’s and their iToi OSX Kitty Computers.
Btw, This MARKETSHARE for the US only. Those IDC/Gartner numbers at 9% are for US Retail only. The mac is and always will be a bi-coastal effete American indulgence and fart in the wind when it comes to Windows and Linux.
The world doesn’t really give two isht’s about bubbly icons and accesorizing themselves with iProducts.