Mac's online share declines?
May 1st 2008
It comes as some surprise that even as Apple's Mac sales continue to rise Net Applications is reporting that the fairer platform's online market share has declined to 7.0.1% in April from 7.48% in March.
Moreover, the web metrics firm also claims that the iPhone's share has contracted, as well, from 0.15% in March to 0.14% in April.
Although it's not unusual for the Mac's online share to fall slightly, the overall trend has been strongly positive IGM began tracking Net Applications data several years ago.
Source: Net Applications
In related news, Net Applications also reports that Apple's effort to drive Safari 3.1 adoption by 'doze users has born fruit.
Normally, Apple's Software Update service is not used for delivery of new products. Clearly, this is a calculated risk by Apple that has annoyed and / or alienated some users. However, the question is, did it work? Did Apple gain browser market share on Windows based on this move? The answer is yes.
Safari 3.0 on Windows never gained much market share, peaking at 0.07%. However, Safari 3.1 on Windows is rapidly gaining market share, already tripling Safari 3.0's peak.
Here's the Browser Top 5 for April:
01 Internet Explorer--76.02% (74.8)
02 Firefox--16.96% (17.83)
03 Safari--5.51% (5.82)
04 Opera--0.65% (0.69)
05 Netscape--0.53% (0.55)
Again, although Mac sales are way up (Safari is the default browser) and Safari's online share is said to be North of 2% on the back of Windows users, Apple's browser saw its overall share decline markedly from March to April.
Editor's note: Is Net Applications using a new sampling method or a different algorithm? They haven't said as much. But, this month's numbers seem to be at odds with recent trends not to mention the reality of the Mac's growing unit-volume market share...
What's up with that?
