In the PC space, the battle between Apple and Microsoft is seemingly as old as the PC itself. Both companies released new versions of their desktop operating systems (OS) last year – Mountain Lion for Apple’s Macintosh computers, and Microsoft’s Windows 8. Chitika Insights examined how each OS has been adopted by Macintosh and Windows users, respectively.
In the PC space, the battle between Apple and Microsoft is seemingly as old as the PC itself. Both companies released new versions of their desktop operating systems (OS) last year – Mountain Lion for Apple’s Macintosh computers, and Microsoft’s Windows 8. Chitika Insights examined how each OS has been adopted by Macintosh and Windows users, respectively.
To quantify this study, Chitika Insights examined a sample of hundreds of millions of U.S. and Canadian online ad impressions from the Chitika Ad Network. To showcase how both operating systems were adopted directly following their respective release dates, this data was drawn from two date ranges.
For the Mountain Lion data, we examined Macintosh-based ad impressions from July 25th to October 14th, 2012, and plotted the share of Mountain Lion against all Macintosh traffic on a seven-day rolling average. For the Windows 8 data, we examined Windows-based ad impressions from October 26th, 2012 to January 13th, 2013, and plotted the share of Windows 8 against all Windows traffic on a seven-day rolling average. Both date ranges represent the first 79 days following an individual OS’ launch. On the graph, we show the x-axis as days since release, and the y-axis as the share of that specific OS amongst all North American Macintosh or Windows Web traffic, respectively.
As seen above, Mountain Lion saw rapid and continued adoption by Mac users, outpacing its predecessor Lion, likely thanks in part to a relatively inexpensive $20 over-the-air upgrade.
While Windows 8 users still generate only 3% of Windows traffic in North America, it’s important to take into account the larger number of Windows PCs currently in use as compared to Macintosh. As can be seen from this data, the adoption rate of Mountain Lion against all Mac usage was far larger than Windows 8’s adoption rate against all Windows operating systems.
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