Mac Gains On Windows Part. 2

By : Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Mac OS X's market share was up 2.3 percentage points during 2008, an annual growth rate of 31.7%.

Net Applications again attributed some of the decline of Windows and the corresponding growth of Mac OS X to special circumstances. "The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage," the company said on its Web site. "This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac...and other products that have relatively high residential usage. All December usage statistics should be read in that context."

Last month, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing, Vince Vizzaccarro, said November's drop in Windows share was due to the higher-than-average number of weekend days and the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. Net Applications has consistently reported that Windows' share slips during times when browsing is conducted from non-work computers, where Microsoft's operating system dominates even more than in homes.

Even so, Windows' market share fall for November-December 2008 was more than twice that of any similar period in the preceding three years. During the same two months of 2007, for example, Windows lost 0.7 of a percentage point, while in 2006 and 2005, Microsoft's operating system dropped 0.45 of a percentage point and 0.51 of a percentage point, respectively.

As has been the case throughout most of the year, Windows XP accounted for the bulk of Microsoft's downturn. During December, the seven-year-old operating system lost 1.1 percentage points. Windows Vista 's share, on the other hand, increased slightly to finish the year just above 21%.

Net Applications' operating system market share numbers can be found on the company's Web site.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com