Apple’s share of the operating system market hit 8.2 percent in September, research firm Net Applications announced Wednesday. The numbers mark the first time the Apple OS has risen above 8 percent.
The new numbers reflect a 0.45-point advance from August’s 7.86 percent market share. In June, OS X approached the 8-percent mark, reaching 7.94 percent.
Mac OS X broke the 7 percent barrier in December 2007, moving to 7.31 percent from 6.8 percent a month earlier.
September’s increase is credited to the surge in Apple sales during the back-to-school period. In September 2007, the Mac OS X market share jumped 0.45 points, mirroring the same growth in September 2008.
Although Microsoft Windows remains above 90 percent of operating systems, that dominant lead slipped slightly in September, falling 0.4 points to 90.3 percent.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
