Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat

jdelator writes to mention ComputerWorld is reporting that Microsoft's Windows Vista has increased their market share steadily every month while their main opponent, Mac OS X, has remained essentially flat. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August."

Comments

Very silly statistic!

[Ancient_Hacker]

This is a useless comparison. Vista will grow in share as there are bazillions of consumers that are running older versions of Windows and have a compulsion to "upgrade". Mac OSX doesnt.

What a silly comparison

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Vista is new and replaces XP, so obviously Vista will be increasing from near zero upwards.

OSX has been around for a long while now, so it is hard to expect sudden changes.

What would make far more sense would be to compare Vista + XP vs OSX. That would give a far better MS vs OSX comparison.

Misleading sensationalism, as usual

[phozz bare]

What the summary fails to mention is that this growth comes at the expense of XP - not Mac OS - with Windows usage overall remaining constant.

There is, really, nothing to see here. Yawn.

Re:Misleading sensationalism, as usual

[FatMacDaddy]

The article explains that:

"Likewise, Vista's increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000, both of which have dropped in usage since January. Windows XP, for instance, accounted for 85.02% of all machines that month but was down to 81.94% in June. Windows overall total has remained flat, ranging between 90.01% and 90.46% through the first six months of the year."

You DID read the article before posting didn't you? Oh wait, I almost forgot, this is Slashdot.

Re:Misleading sensationalism, as usual

[smitty97]

If you add up the 3 windows versions, and the 2 mac versions, you get the opposite trend:
<code>
Month        XP+2K+Vista        MacOS + Intel
July,  2006        90.39%        4.29%
August, 2006        90.72%        4.33%
September, 2006        90.70%        4.72%
October, 2006        90.50%        5.21%
November, 2006        90.52%        5.39%
December, 2006        90.46%        5.67%
January, 2007        90.13%        6.22%
February, 2007        90.01%        6.38%
March, 2007        90.32%        6.08%
April, 2007        90.09%        6.21%
May, 2007        90.07%        6.46%
June, 2007        90.46%        6.00%
<code>

Back to School, Beyotches

[water-and-sewer]

August begins next week, and within three weeks zillions of students will head back to school. A lot of them are eying that tasty "buy a Mac, get a free Ipod Nano" advertisement as I write. I suspect macs will spike soon enough.

Not that I care. I've given up advocating Mac OS X. Let Windows keep its monopoly so all the virus writer's choice remains clear. The rest of us can enjoy an easier existence. It's like going into the mosquito swarm with a fat, naked friend. Go get'em! Have fun downloading your latest virus definition file, suckers.

Naturally

[Anonymous Coward]

Well sure. Now that Safari is available on Windows, why switch?

If Vista's uptake trend continues...

[BarryJacobsen]

If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August. Why stop at August - in a mere 9 years it will have 110% of the market!

I'm curious to see how the release of Leopard will change these numbers, I know I'm waiting to buy a mac (replacing my PC, I already have an ibook, not that you care.) until after Leopard.

Oops

[Thyamine]

Sorry, that bump in May was because I bought my new Macbook Pro for my birthday. Didn't mean to disrupt everything. Move along. This isn't the Macbook you're looking for. Move along.

And Windows users buy PCs more often

[blueZ3]

Windows rules the corporate roost, where the average life of a PC is 2-3 years. You also have lots of folks buying a new Windows box when their old one "becomes slow" because of malware. You probably have an average Windows computer lifespan of around three years. Every time a Windows box heads for the landfill (or is donated to a school, re-tooled with a Linux install, etc.) you potentially have another Windows sale.

Macs, on the other hand, tend to be kept a lot longer. There are a good number of folks with 5-6 year old Macs that are still happily using them. Every one of those six-year-old macs means that Apple has 1/2 the OS sales (per user) as Windows.

That's why I'm baffled by the spurrious price comparisons between Macs and Windows PCs. Sure my PowerBook cost 25% more than your Dell. But in three years, when you send your Dell off to laptop heaven (or more likely, if it's Dell, laptop hell) my PowerBook will still have at least three years of useful life left. Making your 25% "savings" actually a loss.

Re:And Windows users buy PCs more often

[ogminlo]

There were indeed price/performance deltas back in the PPC days of the Mac, but with the Intel switch the list prices for Macs compared to Dells have equalized. In fact, a MacBook compared to a similarly-spec'd Dell XPS (the Inspiron line can't spec up to the MacBook) favor the Mac by better than 100 bucks. Actually, the XPS noted here is eerily similar to the Macbook... I'm sure it is just a coincidence.

MacBook midrange white @ $1,299
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
120GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
XGA 1280 by 800 (native) TFT display with built-in iSight
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Dell XPS M1330 white @ $1,474
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
XGA Standard Display with 2.0 Megapixel Webcam
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)

The Dell has slightly better graphics capability and the Mac has a slight CPU advantage, but the point is the old bunk argument about how expensive Macs are is indeed just bunk. It doesn't matter if PC users chuck their rigs sooner or not- the Macs are less expensive than their brand name PC counterparts nowadays.

Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[G4from128k]

Lets think about what the Vista penetration SHOULD BE with a very conservative estimate. Assuming that the average person buys a new PC every 4 years (actual stats suggest the refresh rates are faster than this) and gets Vista with a new PC, Vista penetration should be at about 11% right now (and that assumes that NO ONE upgrades and total PC use is flat). If PC penetration is growing (which it is) or former XP users are upgrading (which I assume some are), then we'd expect even higher than 11% penetration by Vista. That Vista penetration is less that 1/3 these expectations suggests that all is not well with this OS launch. These numbers suggest that very very few people have upgraded from XP and that many people buying new PCs are avoiding Vista (confirmed by MSFT's announcement of higher-than expected XP sales into the coming years).

Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[clodney]

I think it is too early to condemn the Vista adoption rate, for the simple fact that very few businesses are going to jump on a new release as soon as it comes out. Vista has only been in full release for 6 months at this point, and the places with the really big user bases are going to be very cautious in their rollout plans. At this point I wouldn't expect the GMs and GEs of the world to either roll it out company wide or even allow it to remain on new units that they bring in the door.

Give it another year and then I think you can legitimately say that Vista adoption is seriously lagging the growth of the market.

There is a story here and the Register got it.

[twitter]

We were just talking about how browser stats are useless. The only hard use number so far comes from disappointing memory sales, and M$'s bottom line which show Vista is not being used much.

The real story is that the upgrade train is out of steam. M$ introduced both a new OS and a new office suit without a real change their bottom line. Their market is stagnant and will only decline as people get sick of XP and see Vista as even worse. The tipping point has arrived.

Re:forced purchases?

[delirium of disorder]

you can't really get anything other than Vista on a new PC

Maybe you just aren't looking hard enough.

So the ACTUAL news is...

[kahei]

That vista has not passed MacOS X yet, despite the benefit of being on a huge and much-encouraged upfrade path.

I'm no anti-MS crusader at all (death to the tyranny of Unix is more my motto) but to be fair, now, that's the real news.

Also I am SO DRUNK you would not believe it. Really, it's disgusting and even a bit scary. To give you some idea I drank a bottle of wine using ond of those 'shooter' things. And that was the start of the evening.

And yet, even *I* can see that Vista uptake, while not disastrous, is notable more for its slowness than for anything else. Maybe it will work out for MS, maybe not, but either way this aricle is bekeeen fearmongering and outright trolling.

Also, and I lie to you not, my /. digging compadres, there is a passed-out ex-girlfreind in my bed who has really only gotten more adorabhle with time, and yet STILL I felt it reasonable to walk over here and point out the obvious. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME.

God this post is embarrassing.

Re:So the ACTUAL news is...

[Ant P.]

THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. You had to walk over to the computer. That's the problem, you shouldn't have left it in the first place.

Nothing to see here....

[jmorris42]

> It seems they are still buying Windows computers though...

Yup, just like they have for the last twenty years. 95% +/- a point or two of new machines sold have been preloaded with whatever Microsoft wants and that isn't likely to change until the Redmond Empire falls. This slow uptake of Vista looks like it is almost entirely being driven by the hardware replacement cycle. Actually this sounds slower than that cycle, makes me wonder just what percentage of new hardware is still being shipped with XP. That should be the headline but the author/publication is obviously a Microsoft Media Whore and they spun it into something positive.

Seriously, ALMOST beating OS X's 6% market share when you are a predatory monopolist who has been cramming Vista down vendor's throats for six+ months now isn't something to be proud of.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seriously, ALMOST beating OS X's 6% market share when you are a predatory monopolist who has been cramming Vista down vendor's throats for six+ months now isn't something to be proud of."

No doubt. It's a given that Vista's use will increase, duh. And when the summery says this:

"[OS X] hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June."

What are they implying? That OSX users suddenly abandoned their Macs and switched to Vista or other?

Re:Nothing to see here....

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know Microsoft sold computers? Or is it possible that you're comparing Apple's 4-5% of the COMPUTER market to Microsoft's 90+% of the OS market?

Here's a better comparison for you - MS hasn't entered a new market sector profitably in YEARS, Apple has done so repeatedly.

Math challenged FA

[fyngyrz]

The whole thing is based on brain damage anyway. Growth isn't measurable by percentage of systems in a dynamic market.

For instance, in a given month say there were 100x systems in use, 75x of which ran windows, and 25x of which ran OSX. Next month, there were 200x systems in use, 150x of which run windows, and 50x of which ran OSX. In both cases, using the article's flawed reasoning, windows is 75% and OSX is 25% so there is no growth for either platform; but the fact is that both systems grew 100%, as there are twice as many of both types of systems in use by month two. Both manufacturers and their investors, etc., would have every reason to celebrate.

That's why using percentages of market is a bankrupt strategy to measure product growth in a dynamic market (which PC's certainly are), and always will be. The question is, are there more systems using the product in question now, than there were the last time one looked? If there is, then the product is growing. If not, it isn't. Doesn't have squat to do with shared percentage as measured against another product.