Report: Apple's Internet presence grows

The Mac operating system in December made a stronger showing among users accessing the Web, according to preliminary figures from Net Applications.

For the month of December, the Mac OS accounted for 9.63 percent of what Net Applications calls market share of Internet usage, a second-place showing. The iPhone, broken out separately, logged 0.44 percent, good enough for fourth place, just ahead of the Sony's PlayStation. That puts the overall Apple share at just over 10 percent.

December figures from Net Applications on operating system share amid Internet use.

(Credit: Net Applications)

The percentage for Mac OS X is a record, up slightly from November but also up 32 percent from December 2007, according to Fortune's report on Net Applications' findings, which are based on browser data. The iPhone's toehold also is a record, more than tripling its December 2007 figure of 0.12 percent.

Windows continues to be the elephant in the room. It accounted for 88.68 percent of Web hits, according to the Operating System Market Share chart on the Net Applications site.

Third place went to the Linux operating system, with 0.85 percent. Other free or open-source operating systems, including FreeBSD and AIX, each accounted for 0.01 percent or less.

One caveat from Net Applications:

The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage.

As the Fortune account points out, "Hidden in these monthly figures are the sharp spikes recorded by Apple's mobile devices around the holidays."

Net Applications accumulates its data from 160 million monthly visitors to its network of hosted Web site statistics.

Market share for December by operating system.

(Credit: Net Applications)

[luxduke]

My web site, which caters to individuals (rather than businesses), received 28% of its hits from Macintosh users in December. Also, 70% Windows, 2% Linux.

[Penguinisto]

Ahhh - so the worm is finally beginning to turn.

[Mr. Dee]

0.85% for Linux? Please! These statistics only prove that Linux is dead in the water. An OS that been around for the past 17 years and its still trying make a pitch. The iPhone on debuted a year and half ago and its already creeping up behind Torvalds hobby.

[Penguinisto]

Nothing to do with Linux per se (the majority of the Web uses Linux for servers already ;) )...

Just good to see that the monopoly's stranglehold on things is slipping.

[Perry_Clease]

"0.85% for Linux? Please! These statistics only prove that Linux is dead in the water. An OS that been around for the past 17 years and its still trying make a pitch."

I am thinking that Linux is used more for servers than for computers used for web surfing.

"The iPhone on debuted a year and half ago and its already creeping up behind Torvalds hobby."

Yes, that is remarkable. I know that I use my iPhone a lot for website access when I am out and about. Even at home when I am in the living room or someplace else away from my desk, and when I do not have my MacBook with me, I will use my iPhone to check a website

[bonesbautista]

So, with all of the Win servers out there, and Windows in the workplace, and all of those losers with 6-8 PCs in their room (1 dude, 6-8 PCs) (smirk), and only about 22,318 Macs in the world (smirking again) - there must be a HUGE number of employees surfing the web at work (shopping on eBay and Craigslist at work counts for "residential use", right?).

Lighten up, already...

[acslater017]

Interesting! Although, it's a bit imprecise/misleading to say that the iPhone is "just ahead of" the Playstation. Yes, they're in 4th and 5th places, respectively - but the iPhone has TEN TIMES the amount of users (or whatever metric this is using). 0.4% vs 0.04%

[JodaMiller]

Just wondering why the Xbox 360 isn't on the list? Xbox Live always has 500,000+ users online. This should easily register.

Was this incorrportated into the Microsoft percentage? (shame, shame)

[johnqh]

500K is nothing.

Apple probably sold over 10 millions iPhone plus several millions iPod Touch by now, for 0.4% of the share. If XBox users browse the net as much as iPhone users (extremely unlikely), it still won't register.

[myles taylor]

The answer is simple: you can't browse the internet on the Xbox 360. This isn't talking about web traffic, but web surfing trends. You can browse the internet on the PS3, but not the Xbox 360.

Happy to have helped.

[drhamad]

I believe the number is at 17m, johnqh

[seven7dust]

the Iphone share is so more Impressive than the Mac share !
Wonder how much Windows Mobile+Blackberry+Symbian have ???
People keep on hating the Iphone
But this clearly shows that it's changing the mobile phone market !
Wonder if the Ipod touch share is included ?

[professionaladventurer]

My stats say 23% for Apple
Windows 73%
Linux 0.93%
iPhone 0.77%
Danger Hiptop 0.21% (WHATEVER THE hell THAT IS!)

[thelemurking]

Danger Hiptop is the T Mobile Sidekick...

here's what I got for my site...

Stats for my site...
by OS
Windows: 12656 - 94.5 %
Macintosh: 399 - 2.9 %
Linux: 240 - 1.7 %
Unknown: 86 - 0.6 %

by browser
Firefox: 8284 - 61.9 %
MS Internet Explorer: 2972 - 22.2 %
Opera: 1649 - 12.3 %
Safari: 395 - 2.9 %
Netscape: 65 - 0.4 %
Samsung (PDA/Phone browser): 19 - 0.1 %
Unknown: 8 - 0 %
Mozilla: 7 - 0 %

[solitare_pax]

Could this story be refined to tell us how many different versions of Windows are in use on the Internet from the data available? I would like to know how big a dent Vista is making on the Windows 95 crowd.

[drhamad]

95 doesn't even register on [one of] my sites. Here's the Windows breakdown:

Windows 864402 89.6 %
Windows XP 561706 58.2 %
Windows NT 1116 0.1 %
Windows Me 468 0 %
Windows Vista 288834 29.9 %
Windows CE 2108 0.2 %
Windows 98 396 0 %
Windows 2003 4468 0.4 %
Windows 2000 5305 0.5 %
Windows 3.xx 1 0 %

[myles taylor]

I like those percentages. Strong enough for there to be competition, yet not so huge that secondary OSes become big targets.

[afterhours]

Do your own analysis:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10

And you'll find more interesting than the stated numbers above are the trends overall. It is no longer good enough that you only knoe .NET coding. You webmasters better bone up on W3C standards instead :)

[technewsjunkie]

I see (IT) people at my office buying Macs for home use.
They often say it's "for the kids". But they seem to have learned a lot about them;-)

(IT) People are coming out of the closet. That's what I am seeing.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Strange, but lots of Wii and PSP owners go onto the Internet. Nothing on them, eh?

[rasmasyean]

Could the "strong residential usage" also be caused by all the layoffs? :(

The iPhone is pretty remarkable. In such a short time it blew every other device out of the water even though it's still a minority and other phones have had browsers for years... I wonder what the figure would be if you can count "tethering".

[Mark_Anderson]

Except hitlinks doesn't count WAP browsers which most phones still use by default.