OS X 10.9 Mavericks Adoption Continues to Grow Steadily

Windows XP

WOW! That's still a lot of people on Windows XP.

I'll admit that's what I'm still running on my Windows computer. But I rarely use it for anything...

Gary

Is this a glimpse into the future of iOS marketshare? Let's hope not.

Here's some interesting real-world statistics from the browser logs for a recipe site I run that I found downright astounding. The audience is heavily skewed toward North America, but there is worldwide traffic.

Interesting fact #1: If you look at mobile devices only, iOS has just about twice the amount of traffic as Android.

So however many Android devices are being sold, people sure aren't using them to browse the sites I run. And it's not in any way a site that would be "iOS user oriented".

Interesting fact #2 (this is the impressive one): Windows currently has about 42% of all pageviews. iOS has about 26%. Android has about 13%. The MacOS has about 10%. Linux, other mobile platforms, and bots make up the remaining chunk.

So a full 1/4 of the traffic to a site that isn't in any way geared toward tech savvy or mobile users--it's long-form recipes, not a blog or news or tech site--is coming from iOS. And if you combine the mobile platforms, they now nearly equal Windows. Based on current trends, in a few months Android and iOS together will outweigh Windows for traffic.

Given that Windows mobile is negligible (less than 1% of traffic), I expect that kind of statistic is a big part of why Steve Balmer got canned.

Interesting fact #3: The #1 browser is Safari (since the logs don't distinguish between desktop and mobile versions). Chrome is #2.

I can remember a time not so long ago when IE made up 90%+ of pageviews to any site I ran.

Things have changed incredibly in the last couple of years, and the distinction between desktop and mobile in so many of these analyst reports simply fails to reflect the reality that, out in the real world if you're running a website, they're both just users, and the proportions are ever more in favor of people on iOS and to a lesser extent other mobile platforms.

Who cares?

How many applications are available for Mac versus those for Windows on PCs? That's why I care about what could happen for mobile devices. Android already has a lead. While developers currently get more bang for their buck on iOS, if marketshare continues to dwindle this won't last long...

Is this a glimpse into the future of iOS marketshare? Let's hope not.

Who cares? Market share is just one metric and not even in the top 5 of the most important metrics. Mac OS X having a tiny market share means absolutely nothing to the designers and developers I work with who use Macs almost exclusively.

The masses will always have the cheaper stuff. That's always been the case in any industry.

Why are Windows 8 and 8.1 counted as two different OSs? 8.1 is pretty much just a service pack for 8. As 8.2 will be.

It's free hence the adoption rate. If it were $30 like Lion it would be less . And the bugs with this OS are plentiful. It is the Vista of OSX. Don't believe me? Well just check out this forum's 10.9 section.