If you're looking for a bright spot in the Mac market share numbers after the recent dips, Net Applications has your back. The May survey indicates an uptick in Safari's share of browser usage -- up to 8.43% from 8.21% in April, and 2% higher than a year earlier. Firefox continues to be the big 2nd banana to leading browser choice IE, with a 22.5% share. It's not yet clear how the IE8 release will drive browser adoption.

Operating system numbers (which aren't definitive, but provide a reasonable indicator of usage) also show a slight rise for Mac OS X (9.81% from 9.73%), also more than 2% over the year-ago allocation.

On the mobile side, the survey company notes that Android browsing usage started out with the same adoption curve as the iPhone/iPod touch, but has since fallen off that pace. Coverage of the Palm Pre starts soon.

[via Ars Technica]

Although overall shipments for Macs are at an 18-month low , worldwide numbers continue to climb. Macworld UK pointed to a Gartner study evaluating UK PC shipments for the first quarter of 2009. Apple has moved up, joining the top five PC manufacturers in terms of units shipped for the first time.

According to Gartner, Apple shipped 143 thousand units in the UK the first quarter of 2009, accounting for 4.8% marketshare. That represents a 6.6% growth year over year, which is in sharp contrast to the 5.1 percent decrease in the overall UK PC market.

At 4.8 percent, Apple is still a relatively small player -- the number four manufacturer, Toshiba, shipped nearly twice as many units -- but these numbers prove that Apple adoption is remaining strong, regardless of the economy.

The figures that will probably get the most play in the non-Mac press are those from Acer, the number three manufacturer in the UK. Acer's year-over-year growth in terms of units shipped was up a whopping 40.6%, due in large part to its price-conscious netbook offerings.

Apple and Acer approach the PC market from opposite ends of the spectrum; Acer goes for high-volume, low-margin sales, Apple does high-margin, lower-volume, yet both companies are succeeding in an industry that is declining worldwide.

What does this mean? Well, to me, it means that despite Microsoft's quips, price doesn't necessarily dictate market share.

Microsoft's share of the operating system market is dropping, while Apple computers and handhelds have topped 10 percent for the first time, according to a new report on Internet-connected computers.

NetApplications, the company that tracks browser and operating system market share for a variety of sites across the Internet, released its data for December 2008. According to a Computerworld analysis, the number of Windows users decreased in December by 0.94 percent to 88.7 percent.

The fall was the steepest in four years since Net Applications began collecting data, and was also more than twice that of any similar period in the previous three years. The Computerworld article does note that December statistics do slant slightly towards the Mac due to the reduced number of in-office days for corporate users, but the overall shift is decidedly Mac-ward even once that's accounted for.

Apple's share is just over 10 percent, if one combines the market share for both Macs and iPhones. Macs account for 9.63 percent of computers online. (Windows Mobile devices are included in the 88.7 percent figure.)

Also of note, almost three quarters of Macs online have an Intel processor. This time last year, less than half had one. Overall, Mac OS X's share grew by 31.7 percent compared to a year ago.

Windows XP remains the operating system with the largest installed base, with over 65 percent of the market.

Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt notes some new Net Applications statistics that suggest 8.87 percent of all Internet users use a Mac: a new record.

Add to that the iPhone platform's 0.37 percent, and over one in eleven use an Apple product to browse the web. The iPhone gained 12 percent more users compared to the month before.

Also notable is that Windows users accounted for less than 90 percent of Internet users for the first time in recent memory. Also, market share for Internet Explorer dropped below 70 percent for the first time since its popularity surged in the late 90s.

Linux also gained ground, increasing almost 17 percent to 0.83 percent of all Internet users.

Net Applications tracks statistics from over 160 million visits to websites it monitors. The full report is here.

There's word this morning that the NPD Group's latest research shows a surprising finish for the iPhone in the 3rd-quarter sales competition among US cellphones bought by consumers; for the first time in three years, there's a new top model. The Motorola RAZR, long the most popular handset for adult consumers, has fallen before the touchable juggernaut from Cupertino, CA.

Yes, even while the overall consumer unit sales for cellphones declined 15% from the year-ago quarter (ouch!), the iPhone 3G kicked the RAZR out and took over as the #1 most popular handset sold in the US. LG also bypassed Motorola as the #1 overall vendor in consumer phone sales. Even though the RAZR is now offered as a free phone on new contracts with many carriers, those phones still count as sales for the purposes of the NPD analysis -- making the iPhone's ascendancy even more stunning.

"The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD (and recent TUAW talkcast guest). Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced Internet features.

The top three phones (the iPhone, the RAZR, and the Blackberry Curve) address some different markets and diverse user needs -- but to have the iPhone on top, even counting in the pent-up demand for a 3G version, is pretty astonishing. Considering that Apple has ramped up from a v1 iPhone which gave up some key functionality in the interest of getting to market in a hurry, and even the 3G model lacks some popular items (copy/paste, tethering), getting to the top of the heap is an achievement worth celebrating.

If you've been paying attention to the news lately, then you know that the U.S. economy is in a bit of a slump. Even so, Apple's market share continues to prosper, according to Register Hardware. Their site is reporting that Apple's market share is now 35% if you look at revenue garnered -- largely due to notebook sales. In addition, Windows-based notebook sales are down 1.5% and at the same time, Mac notebook sales are up 35% (by units).

In other news, ComputerWorld is reporting that Mac OS X's market share is currently at 8.2%. This means that 8.2% of all the computers accessing over 40,000 websites that are monitored by Net Applications. This is a huge milestone for Apple as this is the first time their market share has gone above 8%. Microsoft still leads the monopoly on the operating system front -- Windows garnered 90.3% of computers accessing websites using Net Applications site monitoring. Windows Vista currently holds 18.3% of the market share.

On the iPhone front, Net Applications reported that 0.3% of the Internet market share was owned by the iPhone -- quite a feat for such a small device. However, it does have the hype machine working for it!


[via ComputerWorld and Register Hardware]

Although there's a powerful malaise in the financial markets right now, analysts who follow Apple are reporting stellar figures for the second quarter of 2008 in both overall computer sales and notebook computer sales in particular.

To begin with, research firm DisplaySearch reports that Apple is now the fourth largest seller of notebooks in North America with a 10.6 percent market share. This was the largest jump among top computer makers, rocketing from a 6.6 percent share in the same period of 2007. Dell still leads the notebook computer market with a solid 21.9 percent of all North American notebook sales, and introduction of their new Inspiron Mini 9 subnotebook is likely to help keep them in the lead for the foreseeable future.

Apple's sales of all Mac models in the U.S. jumped a whopping 38 percent during the second quarter compared to the same period in 2007. Gartner reported that the company shipped almost 1.4 million Macs in the U.S. during the April - June timeframe in 2008, up from about 1 million in the second quarter of 2007.

Let's hope that Apple's halo effect can rub off on the rest of the world markets soon!

[via Cult of Mac]

Ben Gray, analyst at Forrester Research, says that Mac OS X accounts for 4.5 percent of the business operating system market, 3¾ times their share in January 2007.

Computerworld notes that all this has happened with one thing notably absent: an enterprise strategy. "I haven't seen anything from Apple that seems to show it's attack[ing] the enterprise market," Gray said.

He says the gains in market share are due to two trends: client virtualization (using software like Parallels or VMWare) and the idea that corporate IT departments are more willing to support a broader range of hardware and software.

"In the end, [IT departments] want their employees to be as productive as humanly possible, so they'll approve tools that people are more comfortable with," said Gray.

In related news, Windows' overall share of the corporate market dipped slightly from 95.6 to 94.9 percent for the same time period.

[Via Macworld.]

According to HitsLink, the people who track web usage statistics, iPhone users account for about a third of one percent of web browsers on the Internet, the largest of any mobile platform.

iPhone ranks fourth overall in terms of operating system market share, behind Windows, Mac, and Linux. On August 16, the stats peaked at 0.45 percent. That's a two-fold increase since the iPhone 3G was released July 11.

Jim Goldman, of business television network CNBC, says that "it's a key metric that shows market penetration and customer use." He cited a report by analyst Andy Hargreaves that suggests the increase in browser market share highlights the iPhone's key, long-term advantages. Well, duh.

"Consumers seem to know what some investors are having trouble grasping -- or believing: that Apple might be positioned better in so many key markets than any of its competitors," Captain Obvious Goldman said.

[Via MacDailyNews.]

According to a survey from the Gartner group, Apple is again the third largest PC vendor in the United States. The company nosed out Acer for the second-quarter bronze. (Dell is number one, followed by HP in second place.)

Apple shipped 1.4 million units last quarter, 38 percent more than the prior quarter. In the United States, PC shipments overall grew by just 4.2 percent.

IDC research manager David Daoud credited Apple's competitors with the company's success, citing consumers' disappointment with the "lack of innovation" among other PC manufacturers. Also: Windows Vista. 'Nuff said.

But that's just the U.S. Apple still lags worldwide, selling only 3.2 percent more units abroad than last quarter. Compare that to other manufacturers, who sold an average of 16 percent more units.

Macs account for nearly 8 percent of internet-connected computers worldwide.

[Via Infoworld.]

The Mac accounts for 7.94 percent of computers on the Internet, and Safari is the browser of choice for 6.31 percent of the same audience, so says marketshare.hitslink.com.

This increases Mac users' worldwide presence by nearly two percent from a year ago. In June 2007, 6.4 percent of the internet used a Mac, and 4.85 percent used Safari.

Charles Jade of Ars Technica also notes that two thirds of Macs in use now feature Intel processors.

The vast majority of the Safari users are Mac users, with only 4.3 percent of Safari users running it under Windows. That's a ten-fold increase, though, in Safari for Windows users since it was introduced at 2007's WWDC.

Jade attributes Safari's gains to the one time Windows "Software Update trick" that placed Safari in the list of apps to update, even if the user didn't have Safari already installed.

Computerworld is reporting on the results of a Yankee Group Research report that finds that 80% of US businesses now have Macs. This represents an huge increase from just two years ago when only 47% of businesses reported having Mac users. The Yankee Group estimates that corporate marketshare has risen to 8-10% overall with 21% of firms reporting more than 50 Mac users. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, 28% are running Windows in virtualization.

While the consumer marketshare (and better yet, profitshare) numbers have looking up for some time now, it's good to see that Apple is finally starting to gain (or regain) a serious foothold in the corporate sphere as well. It's no surprise that as more users get acquainted with Apple gear at home that they're bringing pressure on corporate IT managers to implement Macs at work as well. Things just keep rolling for the bean counters in Cupertino.

In the "premium" computer market -- at least, for machines sold in brick and mortar stores -- Apple holds its own as number one. For the first quarter of this year, Macs accounted for 66 percent of computers that retailed for over $1,000, according to eWeek.

That's not all: 70 percent of desktops sold at the same price point (or higher) are made by Apple too.

Even though sales at physical stores represent only a fraction of the overall computer market, what's most impressive for this stat is the year-over-year growth. Apple had 18 percent of the premium market in January 2006. That grew to 57 percent in September 2007, and just six months later rose to 66 percent. In the same eWeek article, Joe Wilcox quotes NPD's Stephen Baker as saying "Windows notebooks had 'zero percent' growth year over year [and] Apple notebooks had '50 to 60 percent growth.'"

Of course, overall, Apple makes 14 percent of computers sold at retail. Compare that to Apple's nadir in the late 90s of around two percent, and you can see how the changes Apple made to its distribution and retail strategy over the last decade have really paid off.

[via Apple 2.0]

The numbers are preliminary, but Gartner's analysis of the US personal computer market for the 1st quarter of 2008 shows some remarkable market expansion year-over-year for Apple. With a 6.6% share of the US market (behind Dell, HP and Acer), Apple shipped over a million Macs in the quarter and had 32% growth in unit sales, far outpacing the 3% growth of the overall market and blowing past sales leader Dell's otherwise stellar 15% growth.

Gartner's report notes that "Apple enjoyed strong retail sales, and there were indications that Apple showed decent growth in the professional market as well." Someone's got to be buying all those machines!

[via MacRumors]

Currently in lead in the UK, Nokia may be given a run for its money as the iPhone is set to be the number one mobile web browsing device. According to iTWire and StatCounter, the iPhone took 0.06 percent of the total internet browser marketshare in the UK for March 2008.

According to StatCounter, the iPhone definitely has some work cut out, if it is to surpass Nokia's 0.15 percent market share to date as of March. iPhone is currently in second place with it's 0.06 percent (which goes up to 0.09 percent if iPod touch browsing is also figured in). But that is still way ahead of the Blackberry with it's 0.02 percent.


[via iTWire]