Apple's Mac operating system market share is up 26.2 percent year-over-year from September 2005 to September 2006. Please note that this does not mean that Apple's market share is 26.2 percent. The number represents percent increase . My prior post for August that demonstrated a 24.4 percent increase caused confusion as many readers were confusing "percent increase" with actual market share percent. Data used in this post has been obtained from Market Share

Key Percent Increases



Up 38.4 percent since January 2005

Up 34.0 percent since April 2005 (Mac OS X Tiger launched April 29, 2005)

Up 12.1 percent January to September 2006 - despite Intel transition

Up 9.0 percent since August 2006 - just one month

Below is an updated view of Apple's Mac OS market share month by month for calender year 2006 up to and including September 2006. Pay careful attention to the numbers because Market Share splits Mac operating system data into two groups, Mac OS and MacIntel. MacIntel represents Intel builds of Mac OS X Tiger. Have a look at the September 2006 data. Mac OS is reported to have 3.88 percent of the operating system share while MacIntel is reported to have 0.84 percent operating system market share. When the numbers are combined, we get the following (Internet Explorer users may have difficulty viewing the images. If so, click 1, 2, 3). You can click on each image to get a larger view:

The graph clearly shows that 2006 has been an exceptional year for Apple as Mac market share is clearly on an upward path. When the data in the above tables are analyzed, they demonstrate several important trends. The first is that the Mac OS operating system has been experiencing at least 23.5 percent year-over-year growth during each month in 2006. The Mac operating system has experienced year-over-year acceleration for two straight months following a relative decceleration in July 2006. The third and most striking is that Apple's monthly percent increase from August 2006 to September 2006 is 9.0 percent, marking the largest month to month increase thus far in 2006. Fourth, Apple's 4.72 percent total market share marks the highest level the company has experienced in 2006.



Not discounting Apple's growing popularity in almost all verticals, a significant chunk of September's increase was probably a result of the recently concluded back-to-school shopping season. Many students and consumers opted to purchase their first Macs and many were enticed by Apple's 2006 Back-To-School promotion that gave students up to a $179 rebate good towards the combined purchase of an iPod and qualifying Macintosh computer. The promotion ended on September 16, 2006.



September's data shows that Apple's share of the most used operating systems is not only growing but the rate of change is also accelerating ahead of the upcoming hoiday buying season. I expect that Apple will experience brisk Macintosh sales for the remainder of the year and will continue to grab market share from its competitors.