iPod touch Net share grew 36% in April
The growing popularity of the iPod touch — Apple's (AAPL) iPhone without the phone — finally registered in the Internet market share data gathered every month by Net Applications.
Stuck for three months running with a 0.11% share of Web traffic, the iPod touch's share in April jumped to 0.15% — a 36% increase in one month, according to preliminary data released overnight Friday. See the chart below:
The iPhone also gained share, up 12% to 0.55%, and Linux rose 13% to grab a larger than 1% share for the first time. But neither could match the iPod touch's growth rate.
Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows and Apple's Mac OS X were each down a hair, to 87.9% and 9.73%, respectively.
Apple doesn't break out iPod touch sales in its quarterly reports, but COO Tim Cook characterized it as a "runaway hit" during the company's second quarter earnings call last week and reported that sales had doubled year over year.
He also released enough information for analysts to calculate that Apple has sold at least 15.83 million units (37 million – 21.17 iPhones) since the iPod touch was launched on Sept. 5, 2007.
To see Net Application’s May 1 report, click here. The month-to-month comparisons are summarized in the table below.
Net Applications’ monthly surveys are conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to websites operated by the firm’s clients. The Web metrics firm describes the results as “market shares,” but they do not actually measure share of market in the traditional sense of revenue or unit sales. They do, however, provide a consistent methodology by which to gauge operating system trends. (See Ars Technica for a good review of the different ways to measure market share.)
If you have ever used a touch you will see that it is the perfect mobile internet device – app store for targeted web viewing (MLB baseball app for baseball scores and online gamecasting)and Safari for generic more broad surfing.
Plus no ATT charges – free wifi is everywhere!
So, iPhone is at 0.55% and iPod touch is at 0.15%, putting Mobile OS X at 0.7%. That's very close to Linux's 1.02%. I'm guessing the Linux bump is due to netbook usage.
And, while spoofing the User Agent was a very useful tool a few years ago, in order to make some sites work, I haven't used it in ages, so I'm not so sure there are that many Linux users with a need for it, given MSIE's falling browser share.
I appreciate the fact that while not perfect, if consistently monitored the same way it helps show trends in OS usage.
Biggest flaw I see is that most people using Linux tend to set their browser preferences in Firefox or Opera to mimic IE – this helps with compatibility for the millions of sites that are microsoft centric.
So as Linux users grow , the statistics for Linux based browser hits doesn't change nearly as fast, thus skewing the data.
I believe the reason for why the ipod touch is so popular is because it is such a versatile device. It's perfect.
Podsod, the ipod touch blog