State Of The Mac 2015: What Of Apple’s XP?

The last time we looked at the state of the Mac, back in 2013, Snow Leopard accounted for a quarter of measured users. At that time, that led some folks to call OS X 10.6 “Apple’s XP.” But has Apple avoided Microsoft’s ignominious fate? Find out in the Fairer Platform’s state of the Mac 2015 report!

As of this writing Windows XP stands at about 12 percent, representing tens of millions of users. For its part, Apple’s OS X 10.6.x Snow Leopard accounts for 7 percent (5.6 million) of the company’s roughly 80-plus million user installed base.

Another important difference between XP and OS X 10.6.x is that the former was released way, way back in 2001. For its part, Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and, believe or not, you can still buy this legacy OS directly from Apple on DVD for $19.99.

So, while OS X Snow Leopard, which is capable of running PowerPC apps, was a bump in the road, it doesn’t rise to the status of Apple’s XP.

State of the Mac: Yosemite Is Tops
As evidenced by OS X 10.10 Yosemite’s 61 percent share (Net Applications) of the overall Mac installed base, Apple has done an exceptional job of new driving OS acceptance. That’s important for focussing developer attention, security, and new feature adoption.

Keeping things fresh has also helped Apple sell more Macs. For example, in its most recent quarter, everyone’s favorite fruit company sold 4.8 million Mac, up 5 percent sequentially and 9 percent year-over-year.

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That is hugely impressive given that overall PC industry unit volume was down by 10 percent last quarter. Moreover, the state of the Mac for the last decade has been good and growing, with Apple’s sales volume beating the PC industry average every quarter except since 2005.

Lastly, all of these factors conspire to give Apple a disproportionate share of overall PC industry profits. Although certainly higher by now, back in 2012, Apple claimed an astounding 45 percent of PC industry profits on a single digit share unit volume share of the world market.

Apple’s US Mac market share is now around 15 percent, depending on who’s doing the measuring.

As has been the consistently been the case for the last decade, the state of the Mac 2015 is bright with the sunniest days yet to come…

What’s your take?

Sources: DigiTimes, Apple Investors, Net Applications