Operating System Market Shares

2010-08-01 by Ilari Scheinin <firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi>, data provided by Net Applications

Net Applications has changed the way their data can be accessed. This screwed up my approach and I have not been able to figure out how to repair things, so for the last couple of months this page is pretty much useless.

Net Applications provide monthly numbers on the market shares of different operating systems. They collect their data by analyzing log files from a number of web sites. Naturally, this means that it is not really market share that they are measuring, but the share of web browsing of different operating systems. But as long as you keep in mind what their methodology is, it does give you data that can be compared over time.

However, I was not completely happy with the way they grouped their results. Also, as they provie only one plot showing all the different operating systems, it is pretty much impossible to get a glimpse of what is happening in e.g. the handheld market as their shares are <1% while Windows has >90%. Because of this, I wrote a couple of scripts (that can be downloaded from the bottom of this page) to group and plot the results they way I wanted.

In June 2009, Net Applications changed the way they report their results. This new methodology is available from January 2008, so this page contains data from that point onwards. The older version (from January 2005 to May 2009) is available here.

Month	Windows	Mac	Linux	Other device	iOS	Java	Symbian	Windows Mobile	Android	BlackBerry	Palm	Other handheld
2008-01	95.26	3.73	0.72	0.13	0.06	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-02	95.22	3.71	0.74	0.15	0.08	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-03	95.12	3.77	0.73	0.20	0.08	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.01
2008-04	95.41	3.45	0.76	0.20	0.07	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.01
2008-05	94.98	3.75	0.89	0.20	0.08	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.01
2008-06	95.04	3.69	0.87	0.22	0.08	0.00	0.05	0.03	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.01
2008-07	95.18	3.54	0.83	0.21	0.10	0.00	0.05	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-08	95.13	3.55	0.82	0.21	0.15	0.00	0.06	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-09	94.89	3.74	0.86	0.23	0.17	0.00	0.06	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-10	94.91	3.80	0.77	0.23	0.16	0.00	0.06	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-11	94.41	4.13	0.91	0.24	0.17	0.00	0.06	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2008-12	93.92	4.45	0.98	0.27	0.21	0.00	0.09	0.04	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.02
2009-01	93.67	4.71	0.90	0.08	0.24	0.22	0.08	0.04	0.01	0.00	0.00	0.02
2009-02	93.74	4.54	0.98	0.09	0.23	0.23	0.08	0.04	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.02
2009-03	93.50	4.69	1.01	0.10	0.24	0.23	0.11	0.04	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.03
2009-04	93.44	4.64	1.06	0.13	0.27	0.25	0.11	0.04	0.02	0.01	0.01	0.03
2009-05	93.17	4.72	1.17	0.13	0.30	0.25	0.12	0.04	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.03
2009-06	93.39	4.70	1.00	0.09	0.33	0.25	0.12	0.04	0.02	0.01	0.01	0.03
2009-07	93.03	4.85	1.05	0.12	0.36	0.29	0.14	0.04	0.02	0.01	0.00	0.03
2009-08	93.06	4.87	0.94	0.15	0.40	0.31	0.14	0.04	0.02	0.02	0.00	0.03
2009-09	92.77	5.11	0.95	0.16	0.42	0.30	0.15	0.04	0.02	0.02	0.00	0.02
2009-10	92.51	5.27	0.96	0.15	0.44	0.35	0.17	0.04	0.03	0.02	0.00	0.02
2009-11	92.51	5.11	1.00	0.13	0.43	0.46	0.19	0.04	0.03	0.03	0.01	0.02
2009-12	92.21	5.12	1.02	0.18	0.53	0.53	0.23	0.06	0.04	0.03	0.01	0.03
2010-01	92.00	5.16	1.02	0.18	0.59	0.59	0.24	0.08	0.05	0.03	0.01	0.03
2010-02	92.11	5.00	0.98	0.19	0.61	0.64	0.23	0.07	0.06	0.04	0.01	0.03
2010-03	91.58	5.33	1.03	0.19	0.62	0.78	0.23	0.07	0.06	0.04	0.00	0.04
2010-04	91.46	5.31	1.05	0.22	0.68	0.79	0.23	0.06	0.09	0.05	0.00	0.04
2010-05	90.48	4.30	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
2010-06	90.81	4.37	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
2010-07	90.67	4.30	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Downloads:
Processing script: group-market-shares.php
Data table: market-shares.txt
Plotting function for R: plot-market-shares.R