If you enjoy running a Windows game alongside your usual Mac applications, you aren’t alone. New numbers indicate U.S. sales of virtualization software is up 50 percent this year.
The sales increase would be even greater than the 41 percent jump in Mac hardware sales Apple recently reported.
Between $15 million and $20 million of Mac virtualization software has been sold so far in 2008, according to NPD Group analyst Michael Redmond.
Redmond, talking to Computerworld, credited Apple’s move to Intel processors for “encouraging more users to experiment with virtualization.”
Differing from Apple’s Boot Camp, which lets Mac users reboot into a Windows environment, virtualization software permits Intel Apple’s to run Windows applications within OSX. The most frequent uses of Mac virtualization is to play a Windows game that has yet to be released for the Apple platform or for developers to test software designed for Windows users.
Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion are the two leading virtualization software packages for the Mac. Parallels, introduced in 2006, has sold a million copies while Fusion (now Fusion 2) sold a quarter million copies since coming on the Mac VM scene in 2007.
(Photo: Jimmy Joe)
