Mac OS marketshare stagnant since early 1999

Web analysis firm StatMarket reported this week that Apple Computer has had little success raising the marketshare of its Macintosh platform over the past year and half, suggesting that most iMac and G3/G4 sales have gone to existing Macintosh users and not new customers. According to the company, Apple has been stuck with approximately 3 percent of the overall OS market since early 1999, at which time Apple's successful iMac was about six months old. As of October 4, 2000, Apple's overall share was only 2.84 percent of all machines connected to the Internet; Apple heavily advertises that most iMac users are connected to the Internet because it is so easy to do so. StatMarket notes that neither Apple nor Linux have made a dent in Microsoft's marketshare dominance.

"It's a case of the glass being either half-empty or half-full for Apple," says StatMarket VP Geoff Johnston. "The fact that Mac's OS share has not eroded, and others have made small gains, seems to indicate that there is room for non-Microsoft operating systems on the Web. StatMarket will continue to monitor and report on OS usage share and other global Internet user trends on a daily basis." The "others" that Johnston refers to are Microsoft's WebTV, Linux, Sun SunOS, Silicon Graphics IRIX, Amiga, and IBM OS/2, which have a collective share of 3.9 percent. Unix OSes combine for only .44 percent, while Windows remains in its own league at 92.82 percent. StatMarket says that this figure, however, is down a full percentage point since early 1999.

StatMarket gathers data on global Internet usage trends by collecting statistics on 40 million visitors a day to nearly 200,000 Web sites. Usage share, which is collected daily, reflects the percentage of Web surfers worldwide that using a particular operating system. With the proliferation of PCs on the Internet, this statistic becomes more relevant to gauge overall OS usage, since fewer unconnected PCs are now in use