Microsoft has not halted Apple's momentum, according to Net Applications' October report

Source: Net Applications

If Microsoft (MSFT) was hoping that the launch of Windows 7 would halt the erosion of its operating system market share — and curb further inroads by Apple (AAPL)  — there is no evidence that it's working yet.

In fact, preliminary data released overnight Sunday by Net Applications show Mac OS X's Internet share growing by 2.73% in October, from 5.12% to 5.26%.

Windows' Internet presence, meanwhile, fell from 92.77% to 92.54% — its ninth loss in 12 months. Windows 7's share, however, was more than 2% even before its Oct. 22 general release, thanks to widespread use of early release versions. By Oct. 30 the Windows 7 portion was 2.85%, largely at the expense of Windows XP, according to a separate Net Applications report.

Net Applications, it must be noted, is not measuring share of market in the sense of sales revenue or unit sales. Rather it tracks the presence of various operating systems on the Internet by sampling browser data from visits to its clients websites — some 160 million hits per month. It's a methodology that tends to favor devices that make it easy to navigate the Web, which explains the relatively high "market share" of the iPhone in the firm's monthly surveys.

You can see Net Applications' October report here. The results are summarized in the chart below.

[UPDATE: Net Applications issued an update Monday entitled "Windows 7 breaks 3% in daily tracking." Meanwhile, their quality control department has reviewed the OS market share trends shown below. In the revised table Windows' market share dropped a bit (to 92.54%) and Mac OS gained (to 5.27%). See here.]

Source: Net Applications

See also:

• Mac's Internet share grew 5% in Sept.
• Net Applications: Apple just lost half its 'market share'

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Apple's (AAPL) share of global Internet traffic is just a thin green slice in a great pie of Microsoft (MSFT) blue, but that slice grew more than 5% last month as Windows' share fell — as it has for eight of the last 12 months — according to data released overnight Thursday by Net Applications.

The Mac's share in September, as measured by the Net metrics firm, was 5.12% — up from 4.87% the month before — while Windows' was 92.77%, down from 93.06%.

The Mac's 5.12% seems quite puny when compared with the 9.77% share Net Applications reported for Mac OS X in May. But that was before the company changed the way it weighs its data in order to more accurately reflect worldwide market shares, as opposed to the U.S.-centric numbers it used to report.

The iPhone's share also grew in September — to 0.35% from 0.33% — a 6.06% increase from a very small base. In May, before the re-weighting of the data, Net Applications reported the iPhone's share as 0.6%.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys are conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to websites operated by its clients. The company describes the results as “market shares,” but they do not actually measure share of market in the sense of sales revenue or unit sales. They used to provide a consistent methodology by which to gauge operating system trends. Now, not so much.

You can see Net Application's September report here. The results are summarized in the chart below.

See also:

• Net Applications: Apple just lost half its 'market share'

Source: Net Applications

The so-called market share reports issued every month by Net Applications have long been controversial — mostly because they didn't actually measure market share (which business people typically express as the number of widgets they sell in a given period divided by the total number of widgets sold).

What Net Applications did instead was sample data from browsers visiting their clients' websites and report what percentage came from machines running Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.

But despite their flaws, we tracked the net metrics firm's reports because their sample size was relatively large — some 160 million visits per month — and because they offered regular snapshots of broad market trends. They revealed, for example, the rise of Firefox, the decline of Internet Explorer, the failure of Windows Vista to catch on. Their reports were consistent, dependable, and free.

Until now.

Net Applications' reports are still free, at least some of them (mobile market share data now costs an arm and a leg). But their dependability — and perhaps their credibility — just took a huge hit.

Starting in June the company changed the way it weights its data, giving more weight to page views from countries with large Internet populations that aren't well represented by their clients (such as China) and less weight to hits from countries like the U.S. that are over-represented in their data.

Wrenching changes

The effect was to cause wrenching changes in the results — so wrenching that Net Applications skipped its June report entirely. And on Saturday, when it finally issued its July report, the new country-by-country fudge factors were applied retroactively to all past reports.

The new market shares for the major operating systems are represented in the pie chart above. To see how different they are from the old, we have to go back to May, the last month for which we have comparable data. The results are summarized in the table below. The major effect of the new weighting system:

• Microsoft (MSFT) Windows' share grew more than 6%
• Apple (AAPL) Mac OS X fell more than 51%
• The iPhone OS lost nearly 60%
• The iPod touch — whose rapid growth was the subject of a Net Applications featured report — fell off the chart
• Java ME — Sun Microsystem's (JAVA) plaform for mobile devices, barely a blip in previous reports — grew 212%

Net Applications has retroactively revised previously published data before (see here), but never to this extent.

In defending the changes, the company argues that they provide a much more accurate view of worldwide usage share statistics. But it also acknowledges that the new method produces "some significant changes in usage share" — usage shares it published with great confidence only a few months ago. The changes it highlights:

• Baidu – Baidu goes to 9% of global search engine usage.  Baidu is on a major growth curve, which is affecting the relative share of all other search engines.
• Google – Because of Baidu's growth, Google's global share is actually going down.  This is almost completely due to Baidu and does not reflect the rest of the world.
• Apple – Since Mac share in the U.S. in significantly higher than the rest of the world, Mac and Safari share drop in the global reports.
• Opera – Opera goes up to 2% in global reports.  This reflects the significant share they have in Eastern Europe and Asia.

[What the company doesn't mention -- but several readers have pointed out -- is that their operating system numbers are now much more in line with StatCounter's global stats.]

You can see Net Applications July market share reports here, and read about the new methodology here. See Ars Technica's primer for a good review of the different ways to measure market share.

See also:

• Mac Internet share hits record 8.87%; Windows drops below 90%
• Apple starts 2009 with strong Net gains
• Apple's Net share slipped in February
• 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.)

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone still has what Net Applications describes as a "commanding lead" in the smartphone search market, but its competitors are gaining fast, according to preliminary data issued overnight Tuesday.

When Net Applications issued its first survey of this market last month, it reported that nearly two out of every three Web searches conducted from a mobile phone in February were made from an iPhone. As Net Applications measures it — a big caveat (see below) — the iPhone's share of searches dropped in March to 63.41% from 66.44%.

This does not mean that iPhone Web browsing is shrinking, the Web metrics firm notes, because the overall market is growing rapidly. (link)

But it does mean that Google's (GOOG) Android, Nokia's (NOK) Symbian and Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry — in that order — are catching up, although none has yet managed to grab more than a 9% share.

Android's growth is particularly striking: up 2.31 points, or 36%, in one month. (See the chart below for the full results.)

The BlackBerry, which was consigned to the catch-all "other" category in February, finally emerged in March as a line item of its own, but with only a 2.69% share.

How can the iPhone's share be so high and the BlackBerry's so low?

As we pointed out last month, the fact that it’s easier to surf the Web on an iPhone is only part of the answer. A more important reason emerges from Net Applications’ description of how its surveys are conducted:

“Our mobile share methodology measures share for browser capable mobile devices. This means the mobile device must be able to render HTML pages and javascript.  Visits to WAP pages are not included.” (link)

WAP (for Wireless Application Protocol) was the Web browsing standard for BlackBerries and other mobile phones  –  famously dismissed by Steve Jobs as the “baby Web“  — until the iPhone came along and offered a Web browser with HTML and Javascript.

In other words, Net Applications is judging the race for mobile Web dominance using the rules set by the iPhone.

The results of the February and March surveys are summarized in the chart below. To learn more about Net Applications, click here.

See also:

• Windows Net share shrank 3.68% year to year
• Report: iPhone has "commanding lead" on Web
• Apple starts 2009 with strong Net gains

The numbers are still in flux, but preliminary figures released Sunday morning by Net Applications show Apple's (AAPL) Internet market share dropping a couple percent in February.

One chart shows Mac OS X with a 9.61% share, down from 9.93% in January. Another puts the share at 9.71%, down 2.22% for the month. The latter seems consistent with other data in the report and is likely to withstand review.

In a separate report, the Web metrics company took its first detailed look at mobile Web browsing and found the iPhone with a "commanding lead" over its such rival systems as Windows Mobile and Google's (GOOG) Android. As Net Applications measured it — a big caveat, it turns out — 66.61% of mobile Web searches in February were made from iPhones. See here.

In the broader search market, Microsoft (MSFT) Windows in its several versions continues to dominate Web traffic with a 88.42% share (or 89.37%, depending which chart you believe), up a smidgen from January. Among the also-rans, Linux was up more than 6% for the month, to 0.88%.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys are conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to websites operated by the firm’s clients. The company 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 Mac market share.)

To see Net Applications' March 1 report, click here. The results are summarized in the table below.

Here's some news that should brighten Steve Jobs' day.

The Web metrics firm Net Applications issued its first survey of the mobile search market overnight Sunday, and Apple's (AAPL) iPhone emerged with what the report describes as a "commanding lead." (link)

As Net Applications measures it — a big caveat (see below) –  nearly 2/3 of  Web searches conducted on a mobile device in the month of February were made from an iPhone.

The other contenders had only thin slices of the mobile Web search pie — although according to this analysis, Android and BlackBerry are rapidly gaining market share.

"This does not mean that iPhone web browsing is shrinking," the report notes, "because the overall market is growing rapidly." (link)

Google's (GOOG) Android is singled out for having grabbed more than 6% of mobile web browsing in less than five months. Others came in with comparable shares — Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile had 6.91% and Nokia's (NOK) Symbian 6.15% –  but they've been around much longer. The stongest contender among the also-rans with 9.1% was an OS you don't hear much about: Java ME, a subset of Sun Microsystems' (JAVA) Java platform popular among developers for creating games and other applications for cell phones.

Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry share in this survey is so small it is consigned to the catch-all "other" category.

How can this be, given that there are a lot more BlackBerrys out there than iPhones?

Part of the answer is that it's easier to surf the Web on an iPhone. But a more important reason emerges from Net Applications' description of how the survey was conducted:

"Our mobile share methodology measures share for browser capable mobile devices. This means the mobile device must be able to render HTML pages and javascript.  Visits to WAP pages are not included." (link)

WAP (for Wireless Application Protocol) was the Web browsing standard for BlackBerries and other mobile phones  –  famously dismissed by Steve Jobs as the "baby Web"  — until the iPhone came along and offered a Web browser with HTML and Javascript.

In other words, Net Applications is judging the race for mobile Web dominance using the rules set by the iPhone.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys have long been controversial. Although the firm has  a fairly large data base — it samples browser data from more than 160 million monthly visits to websites operated by its clients — it describes the results as "market shares," a term usually reserved for share of market as measured by revenue or unit sales.

But Net Applications does provide a consistent methodology by which to gauge browser and operating system trends. (See Ars Technica's "Making sense of Mac market share figures," published just last week.)

Net Applications' mobile browser report is available here.

Preliminary results from the same survey show a small drop in Mac OS X's Internet share. But that's another story. See Apple's Net share slipped in February.

Apple (AAPL) consolidated its 2008 holiday Internet market-share gains with strong performances from the Mac, iPhone and iPod touch in January, according to preliminary data issued overnight Sunday by Net Applications.

The Web metrics company had warned last month that residential usage during the holiday season might skew results in favor of Apple products like the Mac, which tend to get used more in the home than the office.

But the Mac's share grew another 3.12% in January to grab a record 9.93% of Internet traffic. The iPhone grew even faster, albeit from a smaller base, up 9.09% to 0.48%, also a new record.

The biggest winner in January, however, was the iPod touch, whose "explosive" growth in December continued unabated after the holidays, growing 37.5% to reach a 0.11% Internet share. (See chart at right.) That means that more than one out of every 1,000 Web hits in January were made from iPod touches — at least according to Net Applications' data.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys are conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to Web sites operated by the firm’s clients. The company describes the results as “market shares,” but they do not actually measure share of market in the traditional sense of sales revenue or unit sales. They do, however, provide a consistent methodology by which to gauge operating system trends.

To see its Feb. 1 report, click here. The results are summarized in the table below.

Although Microsoft (MSFT) Windows still dominates both the desktop and the Web — with nearly 9 out of 10 page views — it lost Internet share for the sixth month in a row. The news last month, according to Net Applications, was the surprisingly strong showing for Windows 7, an OS that has not yet been formally released. As Net Application reports:

"The Windows 7 beta releases in January have led to a spike in usage share … This is an indication of strong interest in Windows 7, since it does not come pre-installed on a computer like Vista.  Beta users are taking the time and effort to install it on their home computers, since corporations generally prohibit beta operating systems to be used in production environments." (link)

The rise of the iPhone, like the course of true love, never did run smooth.

Quarterly sales last year varied widely, from a low of 720,000 in June to a high of 6,890,000 in September following the release of the iPhone 3G.

But that's nothing compared with the weird patterns that emerge from data collected by Net Applications, a Web metrics firm that tracks hits to its clients' websites on a daily basis — a total of 160 million visitors per month.

The chart above (full size below the fold), created by Hank Vaccaro of Standard Analytics and posted last week on The Mac Observer's Apple Finance Board, displays Net Applications' iPhone data for the device's first 18 months on the market. The first part of the chart is drawn from weekly data; the last part includes daily variations.

With the caveat that this graph represents how frequently iPhone owners are using the Web, not iPhone sales or market share, it still tells us quite a bit about the iPhone's growth over the past year and a half.

First, by tracking the seven-day moving average (the red line in Vaccaro's graph), we can see four clear spikes:

1. The initial release in June-July 2007
2. Holiday sales in Dec. 2007
3. The release of the iPhone 3G in July 2008
4. Holiday sales in Dec. 2008

We won't know how strong sales were in December until Apple (AAPL) releases its quarterly earnings next week (Jan. 21 at 5 p.m. EST), but based on the magnitude of that last bump, they shouldn't be too shabby. (Citibank's Richard Gardner on Tuesday cut his 12-month price target for Apple shares from $153 to $132 based in part on what he called "soft 4CQ08 iPhone shipments," but didn't say where he got his data.)

And what about the strange saw-tooth pattern in the last part of the chart? That's created by the daily variations in Web hits. On weekdays, the Internet tends to be dominated by office computers — mostly PCs running Windows. But on weekends, home users take over, and that includes a higher percentage of Macs, iPhones and other non-Windows devices. The variation is striking — as much as 40% in a single day.

But it all smooths out in the long run, as represented in Vaccaro's chart by a thick black line, and the trend — so far — is an exponential rise.

See also:

• iPod touch use "exploded" Christmas day
• Apple's Internet share registered strong gains in December
• iPhone Web share hits record 0.48%, up 58% in one month

Below the fold: Vaccaro's chart, full size:

Did Apple's (AAPL) unrelenting advertising campaign for the iPod touch as a game machine  ("The funnest iPod ever") pay off this holiday season?

Indirect data from two Web-based sources suggest it did — big time.

Net Applications (a Web metrics firm), and AdMob (a mobile Web ad network) both produced graphs last week with sharp Christmas day spikes of the kind you usually see only from runaway hits.

"iPod Touch requests on AdMob's network exploded on December 25th," according to AdMob's Mobile Metrics Report for December 2008. Ad requests from the devices — a rough measure of Web traffic — increased 3.4 times from November to December. Since July those requests have increased more than 16-fold, from 18 million to 292 million.

As a result, the iPod touch is now the No. 2 device on the AdMob network, with a 4.7% share. Combined, the iPhone and iPod touch now represent 15.5% of all worldwide requests.

Apple challenges Sony and Nintendo

The lion's share of those ad requests come from the United States, but AdMob's country-by-country breakdown suggest that the touch's impact is considerably wider than that.

To read a summary of AdMob's findings, or to download a pdf of the full report, click here.

Net Applications did not issue a separate report, but its day-by-day chart of page views shows a similar spike that settled down in the week after Christmas at a level roughly double what it was going into the holidays.

We won't know exactly how many units Apple sold this holiday season until later this month, when the company releases the results of its first fiscal quarter for 2009. Last year Apple sold 3.5 million iPod touches in 2008 Q1, which closed at the end of December 2007.

According to AdMob, the company "serves Graphical Banner and Text Link ads on mobile web pages for more than 6,000 publishers. … Every day, we see ad requests from more than 160 countries."

From Net Applications: "We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers.  The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month."

(Hmmm, 160 countries, 160 million visitors. … Perhaps 160 is to the Web what 40 is to the Bible, a nice round number that means "a lot.")