Ars Technica looks at some figures regarding OS penetration in the US, as provided by web analytics firm Quantcast, which show that Mac OS X penetration is currently at 10.9%. This is an interesting figure, and one that merits some examination.
First, Apple’s market share is far below 10.9% in the US, being around 7.5% last summer. So how does Apple get an installed base of nearly 11%? Macs tend to last longer than PCs, and they have a much better penetration in homes than in businesses, where people tend to keep them longer. So while Apple is selling around 8% of new computers, more of the ones they’ve sold over the years are still in circulation.
Of course, all of these figures are just educated guesses. And this older Ars Technica article looks at how to interpret this type of figure. It’s interesting to point out that browser share may be a better judge of actual computer use, because it leaves out the many “utilitarian” PCs that may simply run unattended, or be used for limited applications. Those PCs are generally bought once and never upgraded, until they are replaced, and few, if any, applications are purchased for them. The broader computer ecosystem depends on the computers that are purchased by individuals for home use, and by business for general productivity use.
Nevertheless, this installed base figure does show that Apple’s presence is increasing, in the US at least, and that the number of Apple users is higher than what sales figures may lead one to believe.
