Web surfers turn to Mac

Jonny Evans
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April 01, 2008
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Apple accounted for 7.58 per cent of all US internet users in March, the latest Net Applications data confirms. 
The figures, which reflect the operating systems used by Web surfers through a series of tracked sites, confirm increasing Mac usage. Mac took 6.48 per cent of internet users in May 2007 and has been growing steadily ever since.
Windows remains dominant, accounting for 91.57 per cent of web user machines, but Apple's iPhone is securing its fourth place slot as the most used platform for internet browsing, with 0.15 per cent of total. While a small number, that's significant when contrasted to other systems used to access the Web, and how long some of these have been made available - it's higher than PlayStation, for example.
The news gets better. Net Applications notes: "Apple's market share gains in December for the Mac and iPhone are impressive.  However, for the last days of December, the numbers are nothing short of spectacular."
Apple ended December with 7.31 per cent share of the online audience, in excess of 7 per cent for the first time and up from 6.8 per cent the previous month. This confirms strong Mac sales across Christmas, and also reveals a steady trend of growth ever since.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today estimated Apple's slice of the consumer PC market to be around 10 per cent and rising on a global basis. He notes that Mac sales grew 37 per cent in 2007 when the Intel transition happened, more than double the industry-wide rate of 15 per cent. 
Munster expects Apple to sell up to 2.1 million Macs in the March quarter, which is 0.6 million more Macs than Wall Street pundits think may have taken place in the period.
Munster also thinks Apple will sell 45 million iPhones by 2009.

 

Comments (3)

Theo Farley (not verified) | April 01, 2008 - 12:59pm

I run a mid-sized web service (not technology related, a few hundred thousand users a month), and I have seen an uptick in Safari use over the past several months. I've also seen a large uptick in iPhone to the point where it is notable. I can hardly measure RIM or any other smart phone.

IE is dropping off slowly, but mostly due to Gecko-based browsers. Safari isn't growing as quickly as FF.

I likely see different numbers than the "big data collectors" due to the age group that my site attracts - about 90%+ of my users are between 20 and 35 years old.

Sparky (not verified) | April 02, 2008 - 3:34am

I was surprised this week when I saw our stats that Firefox is 37%, 31% IE and 29% are Safari. OS - 60% are Microsoft Windows and 35% are Apple. Screen resolutions have also changed with 60% over 1280x1024. We are also tracking iPhone stats which have also gone up to around 3%.

I see the opposite, Safari is growing quicker than FF. FF is leveling out at least for our domains.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 04, 2008 - 8:51am

Microsoft is going down someday!