Apple market share continues to climb, Windows drops

by Mel Martin on Feb 2nd 2009

T hey are not dramatic changes, but they are steady and heartening to the Apple universe of users and developers. The trend continues from December numbers, and for Apple, all the trends are good. Net Applications, a company that tracks operating system and market share by looking at results from search engines, reports that Apple has a 9.93% share of OS users for January of 2009, up from 9.63% the previous month. Windows OS market share measured 88.26% in January, dropping slightly from 88.7% in December. If you add in iPhone users (0.48%) to the Mac OS X data, the Apple market share is 10.41%, which again, is higher that last month. Browser shares are also an interesting data point. Net Applications says Microsoft's Internet Explorer has the lowest market share since they began tracking browsers in 2005. IE users now comprise 67.6% of the browsers online. In the last 12 months, IE has dropped about 8%. For the third month in a row, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome all gained market share at the expense of Microsoft. Safari's share of 8.3% is a record for Apple. These numbers continue to be good news for Apple, a company trying to buck a nasty recession along with the rest of the industry.

April 1, 2008, 8:46 am

Analyst: Apple’s U.S. consumer market share now 21 percent

T he iPhone gets the most press and the iPod sells in the largest quantities, but it’s the Macintosh that really drives Apple’s growth, says Gene Munster.

In the second installment of a multipart report on Apple’s “3 Cylinder Engine,” Piper Jaffray’s chief Apple (AAPL) analyst looks at the Mac business over the next couple of years and likes what he sees. In particular:

• Growth: After Apple introduced the Intel Macs, Mac sales grew 37% in 2007, more than double the industry-wide rate of 15%. Munster is modeling 2.0 to 2.1 million Macs for the March quarter (vs. the Street’s 1.95 million). He believes Apple will continue to outpace its competitors with upgraded iMacs and Mac minis in the next 3 months and redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros in time for the ‘08 education season.

• Market Share: According to IDC, Apple’s worldwide market share grew from 2.4% in 2006 to 2.9% in 2007. (See chart below.) Munster is conservatively modeling global market share to remain flat this year, but he notes that enterprise sales account for 70% of the worldwide market, a segment Apple is not aggressively targeting. In the consumer market, where Apple does compete, he estimates the Mac’s share is now 10% worldwide and an impressive 21% in the U.S.

• Sales Price: While Apple has gained market share over the past three years, it has also been able to resist the industry trend of decreasing sales prices. In fact, it actually increased its average sales price (ASP) by more than $150 from December ‘05 to December ‘07. “The combination of increasing ASPs and rising market share is evidence of a compelling product line,” writes Munster.

One more thing: although consumers and investors tend to believe Macs cost 20% to 30% more than comparable PCs, according to Munster, he did some price comparisons and found that on average, the price difference is closer to 16% for desktop machines and 9% for laptops — essentially unchanged from a similar comparison he made two years ago. Details in the charts below the fold. The IDC numbers:

The price comparisons:

Friday, May 16, 2008 6:30 PM/EST