Mac Market Share Up in U.S., Down Worldwide: iOS to Blame?

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Mac Market Share Up in U.S., Down Worldwide: iOS to Blame?

According to the October report from Net Applications, the Mac remains mainly an American platform. Mac market share in the U.S. has been steadily climbing, rising in recent months from 11.2 percent in August to 11.4 percent in October. That percentage roughly correlates with Mac sales data published by Gartner and IDC, which put the Mac's market share in the U.S.at 9.3 and 10.6 percent, respectively, for the third quarter of 2010.

The correlation is important because Net Applications derives its data from some 160 million visitors per month to a network of sites. If Net Application data follows sales data for the U.S., that data likely proves true for calculating Mac market share worldwide, and that's not exactly good news for the Mac. For October, Net Applications has OS X market share at 4.98 percent worldwide, down from 5.03 percent in September.

Looking at the trend for OS X over the last two years, it's apparent there's been a flattening of growth worldwide. iOS is showing growth, and so may be accounting for more of people's internet browser time. That's not necessarily bad news for the Mac, though. Just because you opt to surf the web on your iPad doesn't mean you don't also own a MacBook Pro, for instance.

Again, Net Applications derives its data from web browsing, and the biggest increase in web browsing as measured by Net Applications over the last two years or so has come from iOS devices. I...

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