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Recently this figure was quoted to be as high as ten per cent, meaning that one in ten machines in the world allegedly was a Mac. Linux had one per cent and the Vole had 88 per cent, with OS/2, various BSDs, BeOS and assorted hobbyist lashups presumably making up the other one per cent.
Common sense would have suggested that these figures were impossible, but the estimates have been used to claim that Apple was fast becoming a market leader.
It would have to be a significant market leader too. Macs are mostly a feature of the North American market, its penetration in Europe is nowhere near as big as in the US. Since Macs are not sold in any of the high volume regions such as China, Russia and the rest of the Far East, about a quarter to a half of sales in the US would have to be Macs, which cannot be the case.
No one seems to have worked this out, and I still get emails from fanboys who recite the ten per cent figure as an article of faith and who seem to think that Apple's black shirted buffoons will be goose-stepping their way over Redmond any day now.
Net Applications too must have been wondering, because it started to look at the way it did its sums. Overnight Apple's market share estimate has been slashed by more than 50 percent to well under 5 per cent of the operating system market. Windows has shot up from the high 80s to over 93 per cent of the market. And the Linux market share is now closer to two percent.
When looked at in terms of world supply, Apple's Iphone is a nonstarter too. If you look at the tame Apple press you would think that Apple has control of the smartphone market. No, it doesn't. It has about two per cent of the smartphone market worldwide. The winner by a long chalk is Nokia.
So where does this idea that Apple is important come from? It is partly the tech press in the US that feeds the world a steady diet of positive Apple Mac news... mostly typed on Macs.
There are journalists out there who have never used a PC in their lives and yet their opinion on the latest Mac gadget is taken as gospel by the great unwashed. The news agenda about Apple, particularly in North America, is being set by... Apple. For example, when did you last see an article about Nokia's worldwide success?
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