Here’s an unexpected Independence Day gift for Apple.

Axel Springer AG, one of Europe’s largest newspaper publishers, with 10,000 employees and more than 150 papers in 30 countries, including its flagship Die Welt, announced on Friday that it is switching its entire operation from PCs to Macs.

In a YouTube video, posted below the fold, CEO Mathias Döpfner lists four reasons for the change:

• Most of the company’s layout work was already being done on Macs
• Macs are more user friendly than other computers
• Apple creates the most elegant computers
• Macs are cheaper to buy and easier to maintain than they were in the past

The changeover will take five years and when complete, according to Döpfner, will make Axel Springer (SPR.F) Apple’s (AAPL) second largest corporate customer, after Google (GOOG).

Via Heise Online.

Microsoft (MSFT) Windows continued its downward drift and Apple’s (AAPL) Mac OS X inched up to a record 7.95% in the market share survey issued Tuesday by Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications.

The biggest gain, however, was recorded by the open-source operating system Linux, which jumped more than 16% in June — albeit from a small base — to hit 0.79%.

The iPhone held steady at 0.16%, reflecting a leveling off of what had been double-digit growth as buyers waited for the new iPhone 3G, which goes on sale next week. In a separate survey issued Monday, RBC Capital reported “unprecedented pent-up demand” for the new model. Data taken from 3,600 members in RBC’s Technology Adoption Panel in early June showed that 56% of those planning to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days planned to buy an iPhone — up from 35% in March and more than double the interest in any of the other brands surveyed. See here for more detail.

The monthly Net Applications survey is conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to websites operated by the firm’s clients. Although it describes the results as “market share,” Net Applications does not actually measure share of market in the traditional sense by revenue or unit sales. It does, however, provide a consistent methodology by which to measure operating system trends.

To see their July 1 report, click here. The results are summarized in the table below.

Drilling deeper into the numbers, ArsTechnica’s Charles Jade notes that the numbers for Intel Macs grew by a quarter of a percent to 5.26 percent, while PPC Mac’s declined to 2.7 percent. In other words, Intel Macs increased at twice the pace of decline for PPCs. “The rapid decline of PPC Macs coupled with sharp gains for Intel Macs no doubt factored into the decision to make Snow Leopard Intel only,” Jade speculates. His chart below:

UPDATE: Net Applications’ model must be more dynamic than we knew. At sunrise in New York on Monday, Mac’s June share was 7.95%. By 8:30 a.m. CT, when Jade posted his report, it had risen to 7.96%. By 3:00 a.m. ET Tuesday it had dropped to 7.94%. And these are last month’s numbers!

After drifting inexplicably in February, March and April — actually losing market share in two out of three months just when Macintosh sales seemed to be on fire — Mac OS X recovered smartly in the Net Applications survey issued overnight Sunday.

Apple’s (AAPL) share of the operating system market grew 5.69% in May to hit a record 7.80%, while Windows in all its flavors dropped half a point to 91.17%. That’s a record low for Microsoft (MSFT), which nonetheless still runs on 9 out of 10 computers on the Internet, as Net Applications measures it (more on its methodology below).

The iPhone’s OS market share, whch Net Applications measures separately from OS X, has temporarily leveled off, according to the report, reflecting the shortage of product as Apple cleared inventory in May and customers held off purchases in anticipation of the new 3G model. In an IDC report issued Friday, the iPhone actually lost share in the smartphone market, falling from 26.7% in the last quarter of 2007 to 19.2% in the first quarter of 2008. RIM (RIMM), meanwhile, gained share in the same period, growing from 35.1% to 44.5% on the strength of new, consumer-oriented BlackBerries. (see here)

The discrepancy between IDC’s and NetApplication’s numbers can be explained to some extent by the nature of the two surveys. IDC’s quarterly reports are sales counts, based on surveys of retail outlets. Net Applications, by contrast, collects data from the browsers of visitors — some 160 million per month — to its customers websites. As such, its findings are probably better described as a snapshot of installed base taken from a less-than-random sample. But the results are useful for indicating trends, and tend to correspond well to domestic market share as measured by more traditional methods.

To see Net Application’s June 1 report, click here. The results are summarized in the table below:

Subscribers: to see the chart, click here.

“Developers,” a VP at Electronic Arts once told me, explaining why there were so many me-too Windows applications, “will walk through the desert in their socks to get to an installed base.”

True enough. But it doesn’t quite explain the results of a survey issued last week by Evans Data Corp. The headline was that most developers are still not targeting Windows Vista when they write new apps. Only 8% of the 380 developers surveyed were writing for Vista; 49% were still targeting Windows XP.

That makes sense, given that XP still enjoys a 73% market share, compared with less than 15% for Vista, according the latest NetApplications report (link).

What is harder to justify, using the desert-and-socks rule, is the sharply increased interest in non-Windows platforms. The press release didn’t mention it, but Evans Data CEO John Andrews did in an interview with Computerworld’s Heather Havenstein:

“Open source alternatives like Linux continue to take on interest,” he [said]. “As well, MacOS is also acquiring significant interest among North American developers. Although unlikely to displace Windows volume, MacOS experienced 50 percent growth as a primary development platform and 380 percent growth as a targeted platform during the period.” (link)

We’ve asked Evans Data to clarify this quote, because in this form it’s not particularly helpful. The 380% figure sounds suspiciously like a misquote, given that the size of the survey group was also 380. And that 50% increase is unanchored; it could mean 1 more developer writing for Mac or 100.

But any increase in Mac and Linux development is surprising — and encouraging — given that Microsoft (MSFT) still owns more than 91% of desktops, Apple’s (AAPL) OS runs on 7.38% and Linux still hasn’t cracked the 1% mark.

Could programmers be developing an interest in something beyond the size of the installed base?

On March 18, along with the latest version of iTunes and QuickTime, Apple slipped a copy of Safari 3.1 into the Software Update it sent to millions of Windows users — even though strictly speaking the first non-beta version of Safari for Windows was a new program and not an “update.”

Critics, among them longtime Apple supporters, excoriated the company for what was widely viewed as an uncharacteristic sleight of hand. They called it “disgraceful,” “malware” and a violation of the “trust relationship great companies have with their customers.” (See for example here)

What they didn’t call it was effective. But data released on Thursday by Net Applications show that the brief experiment worked rather well. During the month that it lasted, the percentage of Safari for Windows users among Net Applications’ clients, which had never climbed above .07%, grew three-fold, to .21%.

It might also have helped that the program was getting good reviews, although it’s not clear how many Microsoft (MSFT) Windows users would ever have tried Apple’s (AAPL) Web browser if it hadn’t been shoved in their face.

On April 18, Apple revised its Software Update protocol. New programs are now clearly marked as such and the box to accept them is unchecked by default.

The news was almost lost yesterday in the Microhoo hoopla: even as Microsoft (MSFT) was trying to buy its way into some kind of parity with Google (GOOG) by gobbling up Yahoo (YHOO), a new survey showed that Apple (AAPL) had taken another little bite out of Redmond’s core business.

According to the latest market share data from Net Applications, Mac OS X’s slice of the computer operating system market grew 3.56% in January while Microsoft Windows’ dropped .36%.

As Net Applications measures it (more on its methodology below), the Mac’s market share stands at a record 7.57%, up 21.7% from Jan. 2007.

“Apple’s market share gains in December for the Mac and iPhone are impressive,” the report concludes. “However, for the last days of December, the numbers are nothing short of spectacular.”

The really good news for Apple, according to Net Applications, came in the last two days of the month, when Mac OS X hit 8.01%.

Windows is still dominates the desktop, of course, with a 91.46% share, but that’s down from 93.33% a year earlier.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys sample data from visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by the firm’s clients. As such, the findings are a snapshot of installed base rather than a month-to-month measure of computer systems sold. The January results are summarized in the table below. The full report can be viewed here.

Reflecting strong holiday sales of both MacBooks and iPhones, Apple’s (AAPL) market share grew sharply in December, as measured by a Net Applications survey released today.

The Mac hit a record 7.3% share, up from 6.8% last month. The iPhone also hit a new record, .12%, up from .09% in November. That suggests that better than 1 out of every 1,000 people on the Internet are browsing the Web using an iPhone.

Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows still dominates, with a 91.8% share as measured by the Web metrics company. But it lost ground in December, as it has for seven of the past 11 months.

The Mac OS share, by contrast, grew 7.4% in the past month, nearly double November’s rate. The iPhone grew even more sharply, jumping 33% over November’s numbers. Only the Playstation (.02% share) grew faster, albeit from a much smaller base.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys do not measure market share in terms of computer systems sold. Rather, they sample data from visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by the firm’s clients. As such, the findings are probably better described as a snapshot of installed base taken from a less-than-random sample. But the results tend to correspond well to domestic market share as measured by more traditional market survey firms like IDC and Gartner. To see Net Application’s full report, click here.

The Linux operating system also showed strong growth (up better than 10% to hit a .63% share), as did “other,” a category that includes the iPod touch, Web TV and the Nintendo Wii.

The results are summarized in the table below:

After taking a brief October dip in advance of Leopard’s release, Apple’s (AAPL) share of the operating system market grew 3.34% in November to hit a record 6.81%, according to the results of a Net Applications survey issued today.

Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows in its various flavors continues to dominate with a 92.42% share, as measured by the Web metrics firm. Among the operating systems gathered in the “other” category are Linux (.57%), Apple’s iPhone (.09%), Sony’s Playstation (.02%), SunOS (.01%) and Nintendo’s Wii (.01%).

Net Applications’ monthly surveys do not measure market share in terms of computer systems sold. Rather, they sample data from visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by their clients. As such, their findings are probably better described as a snapshot of installed base taken from a less than random sample. But they do reflect market share trends, and it’s always interesting to compare their results with those from firms like Gartner and IDC, which track quarterly shipments.

Net Applications’ October report, for example, showed Apple with a 6.61% market share. A couple weeks earlier, IDC had calculated Apple’s domestic market share in terms of units shipped in the 3rd quarter at 6.3% while Gartner’s estimate for the same period came in at 8.1%. (link)

Net Applications’ November results are summarized in the table below: