Two organizations that monitor the operating systems and Browsers active on the Internet have seen a remarkable surge in Mac OS X in the past eight months, according to Computerworld on Tuesday.
"The amazing story since last summer has been how well the Mac is doing," said Geoff Johnston, an analyst at WebSideStory Inc. in San Diego. "For the longest time, Mac hung around 3% of the operating systems using the Web. But it picked up around last summer, and has nearly doubled its market share."
Mac OS X has recently been at about 6% of all computers in the U.S. connected to the Internet. Another group, Net Applications, has seen similar numbers.
For the first time since 1999, when we started tracking, the Mac has really made a major push," said Johnston. Mr. Johnston believes he sees a correlation between the introduction of the Intel Macs and this recent surge. The trends suggest that the Mac gaining some market share.
TMO notes that these methodologies vary and different analysts use different metrics and different reporting methods. For quite some time, TMO has published a regular report on Browser market share based on a different group, Market Share.
Even though itis hard to pin down absolute numbers, when multiple sources see a trend, thatis important to note. A steady decline of MSIE, a steady growth of Firefox and steady growth in Safari are now being routinely reported.