Vista Cannibalizing XP, not Mac OS X

Vista is not eating into Mac OS X market share, rather, itis taking market share away from Windows XP. Meanwhile, Appleis market share growth, while not as fast as Vista, remains steady, according to C|Net on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, Net Applications, which tracks OS sales, reported that Vistais market share is increasing and that Appleis is declining. The conclusion by some has been that Vista is taking market share away from Mac OS X.

However, a closer look at the numbers shows that Vista is, in fact, taking market share away from XP, and that while Mac OS X had a small dip in June, it has been steadily gaining market share, up from 4.29 percent last summer to about 6 percent this summer.

Itis true that Vista has achieved its 5 percent of all PCs in just six months, so the growth rate is faster than Mac OS X. However, Windows total market share has remained steady in the last year, about 90.4 percent.

It all depends on how one looks at the numbers.