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."

Wow, what news, MS outsells Apple!

[by Anonymous Coward]

What a non news event. Just think, MS outsells OS X. That's news?

Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[G4from128k (686170)]

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 (778910)]

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.

Re:

[lilomar (1072448)]

My conclusion is basically this: if you suck at computers and are gullible and unwilling to investigate things for yourself, Vista sucks. Otherwise, Vista is quite neat and very handy.

Wow, Windows used to be the OS for people who didn't have a clue about computers. I guess with Ubuntu filling that particular niche, MS is moving into Linux's traditional realm of, "Yeah, It works great if you know what you're doing. Otherwise, go with the easy option."

Re:

[WIAKywbfatw (307557)]

Why don't we wait until the first Service Pack has been out for a few months before talking about how good or bad Vista adoption has been?

I don't know about you, but I'm not shy about telling people that waiting until Vista SP1 has been tried and tested is a prudent move.

Re:Vista Numbers Suggest Poor Adoption

[ZorinLynx (31751)]

>Activation is indeed a problem although it's interesting that you explicitly state corp editions when it's a complete non-issue for corp editions and is only a problem for home users. For corp uses you have a central authorization server which you probably already have in the form of SMS. That's a complete non-issue a corp edition of Vista are not tied to the machines which is the whole reason business buy those licenses instead of retail.

I don't want to need anyone's "permission" to use software I bought. PERIOD.

And yes, it's more a matter of principle than any inconvenience suffered.

Very silly statistic!

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

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.

Re:Very silly statistic!

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Every new OS X user has to switch operating system and computer vendors, while every new Vista user just needs to buy the new version of the operating system that they were using. For this reason, it might not make sense to perform the comparison, since it is much harder to become a new OS X user (especially if you're in one of the large categories of people who get free licenses for MS software).

On the other hand, the absolute market share figures are still interesting. With Apple selling 15% of new laptops this year, it is slightly surprising that they only have a 6-7% market share.

Re:

[644bd346996 (1012333)]

I really doubt that there are lots of people buying boxed upgrades to Vista. What seems more likely is that they are negligible compared to the people who don't know enough to request XP when they buy a new system.

Also, among potential Mac switchers, it is probably common knowledge that now is not the time to buy. Let's wait until this time next year, after Leopard has started to settle in and more people have gotten frustrated by Vista. We could see a very different picture.

And Windows users buy PCs more often

[blueZ3 (744446)]

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

[shayborg (650364)]

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.

I'm not sure about this. My primary machine at home is a 3-year-old Dell Inspiron 700m. It cost me $800 when I bought it — much less than any comparably powered Apple laptop at the time — and is still going strong. The laptop still does all it did three years ago; it browses the Web, plays music and DVDs, burns CDs, and handles some light development work. I upgraded the hard drive and the RAM more than two years ago, but that's because I bought a low end laptop to begin with. You'd do the same with an iBook that shipped with a 30 GB hard drive and 512 MB RAM. All the other hardware is stock and works just as well as it did when I bought it.

The point is that I don't see how a Mac laptop inherently has three more years of life. From what I hear anecdotally the internal hardware is pretty much the same these days. As far as the software goes, my laptop will run Vista adequately if not well, and you could say the same of a three-year-old Apple laptop and Leopard.

Re:And Windows users buy PCs more often

[ogminlo (941711)]

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.

Re:

[walt-sjc (145127)]

In order to continue to be able to buy OEM licenses at rock bottom prices (and therefore compete in the market,) Dell has NO CHOICE but to "recommend" Vista. Do their Tech people "recommend" it? Nope - just Marketing.

That said, you are 100% correct that it's EASY to buy a XP loaded Dell. XP is a standard option.
The same is NOT the case at the local Bad Buy, Officemax, etc. where the only option is Vista, preloaded on all machines.

Re:Very silly statistic!

[fyngyrz (762201)]

I run windows from time to time... but I run it in a sandbox on my Mac. Linux too. So every time someone counts my windows or my linux, it's really counting a Mac anyway. :-)

What a silly comparison

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

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.

Re:

[ILikeRed (141848)]

I think it is pretty telling that with 90% market share, Microsoft is having problems pushing their new OS on their current customers [yahoo.com] - even generally uneducated ones that for one reason or another are buying new computers but going through the trouble to stick with Windows XP [theregister.co.uk].

Microsoft need not worry about OS X, they need to worry about Windows ME all over again. Maybe users don't like DRM, spyware, and inequitable licensing terms after all, but I suspect Microsoft will end up blaming multiple versions co

Misleading sensationalism, as usual

[phozz bare (720522)]

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.

There is a story here and the Register got it.

[twitter (104583)]

We were just talking about how browser stats are useless [slashdot.org]. The only hard use number so far comes from disappointing memory sales [slashdot.org], and M$'s bottom line [slashdot.org] 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 [theregister.co.uk]. 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:Misleading sensationalism, as usual

[smitty97 (995791)]

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>

Re:Misleading sensationalism, as usual

[FatMacDaddy (878246)]

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.

forced purchases?

[SKiRgE (411560)]

Could the increase have to do with the fact that you can't really get anything other than Vista on a new PC?

Re:forced purchases?

[delirium of disorder (701392)]

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

Maybe you just [sun.com] aren't [system76.com] looking [dell.com] hard enough.

Re:forced purchases?

[jedidiah (1196)]

You cited an overpriced Unix vendor that normal consumers never heard of, a mail order Linux vendor that most Linux users have never heard of (nevermind "normal consumers") and a major vendor that's offering limited support for a small subset of their product.

If you can't see the problem of paying $5000 for a desktop from someone you've never really heard of before then you're way out of touch with the common man.

At least the $2000+ Apple desktops benefit from the long track record (for better or worse) that Apple has in consumer computing.

Sun might as well be LG. Actually, LG would at least be a name people might recognize.

This is hardly a valid analysis

[janrinok (846318)]

Of course Vista is increasing its market share. It is starting from a zero and slowly increasing. I would be surprised if anything else happened. And the fact the the Mac isn't growing in usage is also not surprising. They cater for different users. The thing that is worth noting is that Vista is growing more slowly than predicted although it will get there eventually simply because it is on most computers that are being sold. Still, there is nothing here that should be news to a regular /.er.

Why is this even news?

[damiam (409504)]

Of course Vista's market share is rising; it just came out and people are forced to upgrade when they buy new machines. Since current Windows marketshare is at least 90%, it would be shocking if Vista didn't eventually account for at least 70%.

Back to School, Beyotches

[water-and-sewer (612923)]

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.

misleading

[brunascle (994197)]

you cant compare Vista and OS X. you can compare Windows and OS X, or Vista and OS X 10.4 (or whatever the newest one is). the Vista numbers are undoubtably people switching from other Windows versions, not from Mac or Linux, whereas the Mac numbers are people switching to/from Mac in general.

Naturally

[by Anonymous Coward]

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

Apples and Elephants

[Llywelyn (531070)]

These are two separate statistics representing two separate things: Vista adoption vs. "Switchers."

They cannot be directly and meaningfully compared on a month-to-month basis.

If Vista's uptake trend continues...

[BarryJacobsen (526926)]

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.

I call BS

[Xybre (527810)]

Whats with all the MS/Vista FUD on Slashdot? I mean, I use Windows, Macs, and Linux all the time, and I know Mac and Linux are growing and a lot of people have said screw Vista for a variety of reasons. There have been many articles disproving the "growth" of Vista adoption.

To further skew the results, some users are upgrading from Windows XP, there isn't a new version of OS X out yet, so why would people be upgrading to it? It just doesn't make any sense. MS isn't gaining any new users here, while Linux and Mac obviously are. Whats with the BS?

So?

[ZachPruckowski (918562)]

Expecting OS X web use to stay above Vista web use is pretty darn silly. Anyone who wasn't expecting Vista to reach 30-50 percent adoption rates (at the minimum) within 4 years is nuts. So "Vista passing OS X" is not unexpected. Only in the ultimate Mac Fanboys' wet dream would OS X marketshare permenantly exceed Vista marketshare.

Also, "percent of web pages browsed" sucks balls as a statistic, since it only covers select websites, doesn't take into account some blocking and privacy techniques, ignores user-agent spoofing, and assumes everyone browses the web at the same rate of pages/machine/day. Now some of that (not a lot of UA spoofing really, and web-browsing rates are probably similar) is not a huge deal, but some of it (which web pages are covered) really is.

Oops

[Thyamine (531612)]

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.

Good grief

[JohnnyGTO (102952)]

This is news? Users on a silo'ed hardware platform, who pretty much have all upgrade to the latest version of OSX and are waiting for the release of Leopard in November aren't running out to buy another copy of Tiger? If I was Microsoft I'd be a bit worried about the numbers considering most current sales of Tiger involve a substantial investment in hardware and an obvious choice in OS philosophy. Where as most sales of Vista involve the loss of an XP user in upgrading and probably not a loss in a Mac user.

Mac fanboy and proud of it (It dual boots Gentoo so phtsssst!)

Is this what passes for windows FUD these days?

[greg_barton (5551)]

Seriously. This is about the weakest FUD I've seen in years. If this is the best the windows side has to offer, they're in trouble.

Re:

[hey! (33014)]

Damn straight. When I was a newbie I had to go to work in a river of bullshit -- upstream both ways.

Kids today get all worked up about stepping in a little cowpat. We didn't take any notice of anything until we had to wave our hat over our heads to keep it clean.

Err... Explains a lot about the way things are today, I guess.

So the ACTUAL news is...

[kahei (466208)]

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. (974313)]

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.

who knew?

[toby (759)]

Just maybe MS is a criminal monopoly that uses, hmm, bundling, lock-in, FUD, lobbying (bribes), kickbacks and so on? As a result, the great unwashed has not even heard of OS X, let alone considers it as an alternative.

Linux share grows 60% from July 2006 to June 2007

[morningstar8 (234758)]

The article's headline is no surprise. But also note that the data quoted by the article [hitslink.com] shows that Linux's share of the market increased from 0.44% in July 2006 [hitslink.com] to 0.71% in June 2007 [hitslink.com]. Go Linux!

It's also worth noting

[Solr_Flare (844465)]

It's also worth noting that a number of people in the desktop market who are interested in Macs are in a holding pattern right now waiting for the major iMac refresh to hit sometime within the next month or so. Likewise, others are waiting until Leopard's release this October before buying a Mac.

Finally, starting this month through December, Apple is rolling out new mini-apple stores inside of 1/3 of the US's Best Buy stores(over 300 stores in total), which is dramatically going to increase their market exposure. Anyway, I agree, it's silly to compare the two because at no time in the near to foreseeable future is Apple going to post higher marketshare numbers than Windows. That said, I'd expect between this august and the first part of next year to see a steady, if not dramatic, increase in Mac marketshare.

In other news...

[richardtallent (309050)]

...sheep outnumber foxes ...followers outnumber leaders ...SUV owners outnumber hybrid owners ...more people voted for major parties in the primaries than third parties ...more people watched a new reality TV show last night than a new special on the History Channel ...more people watched TV last night than picked up a newspaper ...it's easier to paint the kitchen walls than to replace the cabinets, floor, and appliances. ...a $99 OS upgrade is cheaper than a new $1500 computer ...more people buy new computers in at the local big box store than hunt for an Apple dealer or shop online

Sheesh. This is "news" now?

Also, the methodology used for this statistic is telling: "web visitors." The user's OS is becoming so inconsequential that it is measured in terms of people using said operating systems merely to access cross-platform, web-based applications.

New computer sales and MOLPS

[nurb432 (527695)]

Well, this is pretty easy to understand.

1 - New pcs come with vista, more pcs are sold then mac.
2 - molp holders need to start upgrading per their agreement. ( and even if they havent yet, when they renew its considerd a 'vista sale' on microsofts books )

Re:

[plague3106 (71849)]

That would be systems that identify themselves in the http header as Vista increased. Any correlation between the actual number of systems with Vista and the number identifying themselves as such is simply an invention of the makers of the study.

Your assumption is that a significant number of people change the headers sent by thier browser of choice. Somehow, I seriously doubt that those people are significate in this study.

Nothing to see here....

[jmorris42 (1458)]

> 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....

[by 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:

[Em Adespoton (792954)]

More than just this... they're comparing ALL flavours of OS X to ONE flavour of NT. For an equal comparison, they should be comparing at least Windows 2000+ to OS X, or else compare Vista to OS X 10.4.

I think all this shows is that when the summer comes, OS X users tend to spend more time outside, and less in front of a web browser.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[mrsteveman1 (1010381)]

All this REALLY shows is this: drawing conclusions about marketshare by looking at indisputably flawed web browser identification methods, is borderline retarded and at the least, useless.

This sort of story should not be on slashdot, even as a 'look how stupid they are' type thing.

Re:Nothing to see here....

[by 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 (762201)]

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.