Why Mac David Is Growing Faster Than Goliath.

It isn’t really news that Mac market share is growing. It has been growing steadily for a few years.

As Mac sales explode, market share is exploding, along with increased market share of OS X and Safari. Why is Mac as David having such success against Windows as Goliath?

Who among us does not know what happened to the arrogant, lumbering, and inept Goliath? Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty because the big guy couldn’t keep his head on straight.

NetApplications is a little company that monitors web page usage, which includes Windows PCs, Macs, Linux, and pretty much anything else that can be tracked and logged on over 40,000 computer users scattered all over.

While market share numbers for the Mac may vary from report to report or stat to stat, one thing is very clear. Mac market share is on a huge upswing, while Windows is dropping.

The latest numbers show Windows with 91.46-percent vs. the Mac’s 7.57-percent. While the gulf between Mac and Windows appears substantial at first, there’s more behind the numbers. Over the past two years, Mac market share has nearly doubled.

Intel-based Mac market share is now higher than PowerPC Macs. Safari, the Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPod touch web browser we love, is at nearly 6-percent.

No David vs. Goliath comparison is complete without an adjustment for reality, a look at the cause and effect. For reality, we’ll note that Mac is a computer that runs OS X, while Windows is merely an operating system that runs on most PCs, home or office, so any comparison isn’t quite apples to Apple.

Guess what runs on the nearly six-million iPhones and iPod touch devices? OS X. Apple TV? OS X. That reality says that Apple’s OS X is healthy and growing market share faster in every segment than whatever Goliath or Lilliputian competition is out there.

How did this happen? How is it that David is managing to succeed in so many areas once dominated by Microsoft’s Goliath? College marketing classes will make a text book case of the history of Apple and Microsoft, but suffice it to say that Apple’s success is coming the hard way.

In simple David and Goliath terms, Apple is earning their share with more attractive, easier-to-use products that work well together, something Microsoft has always had trouble pulling off. Granted, Microsoft’s ill-gotten tentacles are embedded deep into the corporate world, so they’re in no danger of becoming the Dell of software makers. Yet.

Notable in NetApplication’s statistics is Windows Vista market share, relative to the Mac and OS X, and to Windows XP.

Vista has garnered a mere 11.96-percent share to XP’s gargantuan 75-percent share a full year after launch. Adoption of Vista is taking a lot of time.

Is it any wonder that Dell is laying off hundreds of call center employees around the country? If the orders are not coming in, there’s no need to pay people to sit around waiting to take orders that don’t come.

How about a few numbers behind the numbers? We’ve discussed this before, but note the obvious. About half of all business and home PCs sold in the US are sub-$1,000 machines. Apple pays only lip service to that market segment with the Mac mini.

What that means is that since the Mac’s sales come mostly in the more lucrative above $1,000 segment, Mac market share is probably closer to 15-percent. Apple sells far more notebooks than desktop Macs, and some estimates put Mac notebook market share at closer to 20-percent in the most sought after and profitable segment.

Again, that’s just the Mac. It’s a computer. Windows is an operating system, so add Mac OS X’s numbers to iPhone, iPod touch, Apple TV, and future products running Apple’s OS, and the picture becomes more telling, and displays an even more competitive position for Apple.

People love the story of David and Goliath. It’s even more enjoyable to see it played out in real life, day to day, product to product.