Apple Inc (AAPL)

[roni]

he installed base of Apple (AAPL) computers rose nearly 6.7% in the month of September to 6.6% of personal computers, driven largely by a one-month 12.7% increase in Intel-based Macs, according to market research released today by Net Applications Inc.

During the same period, machines running Microsoft (MSFT) Windows actually lost share, despite a sharp one-month growth in Windows Vista numbers.

Net Applications samples operating system data from visitors to a network of some 40,000 websites scattered around the world, a method that tends to skew results toward computers that are heavily used and away from those that are gathering dust. It is less a measure of market share than of active installed base.

By Net Applications' reckoning, more than 90% of the computers on the Internet are running some flavor of Windows while 6.6% are running a version of OS X. Nearly 3.4% are categorized as "other," which includes 0.81% Linux and 0.07% iPhone (up from 0.05% in August).

Among mainstream operating systems, Vista was the fastest-growing, up more than 15% for the month, although Windows' numbers overall were down slightly.

Linux and iPhone both showed double-digit gains, up better than 18% and 28%, respectively. The iPhone data were taken too early to reflect the effect of the software update last week that rendered unlocked phones inoperable.

The table below, derived from Net Applications' research, summarizes its August and September results. For more detail, you can go directly to their website here. For their web browser numbers, see Safari Gains Ground in Browser Wars.



http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/10/mac-installed-b.html