According to Net Applications, a leading IT research company, in just the past two months Apple’s Mac OS X gained almost 1.5% in the operating systems market. When November began, OS X had an 8.21% market share, and ended 2008 with a 9.63% share of the operating systems market.
OS X’s gain might seem insignificant when compared with Microsoft Windows’ 88.68% market share but it becomes less so when looked at with a little more context.
In November 2007 OS X had a 6.58% market share while Windows enjoyed 92.49% of the operating system market. OS X and Windows closed out 2007 with a 7.31% and 91.79% market shares respectively. Since that time the two have continued going in opposite directions.
During the last two months of 2008 OS X gained a record number of users, while Windows suffered its greatest decrease in users in almost four years.
Analysts attribute OS X’s growing popularity to Apple’s practice of releasing frequent updates to its operating system, as well as the fact that each new version of Mac OS X has been faster and more streamlined than its predecessor. On the other hand, Microsoft’s newest operating, Vista, has been plagued with myriad problems and rampant user dissatisfaction.
Let’s hope that this bit of competition is enough to cause Microsoft to lose some of its arrogance and complacency so that the upcoming Windows 7 does not end up being Vista #2.
All market share data provided by: www.netapplications.com
