electronista.com — Microsoft's has taken a bruising in the Japanese marketplace just as Apple's Mac OS X Leopard was released, according to a new report by the country's Business Computer News. Sales of Mac OS X soared between September and October, but Windows plummeted to almost a third of its earlier growth -- giving Apple 54 percent of all OS sales in Japan.
Nov 13, 2007 View in Crawl 4
kellyNov 13, 2007
While it's important to recognize that this is market share (which only gauges sales of a product rather than its install base) its equally important to recognize that the majority of the public mistakenly uses the market share statistic to gauge Microsoft's install base.For example, throughout the time the Microsoft apologists spouted Microsoft's 95% market share, the company maintained only an 78% install base among consumers (not including servers and dumb terminals that run Windows.)It's been said that Macintosh install base is somewhere in the range of 10-13% among consumers (not including servers and dumb terminals that run Windows) but you will find few research companies that report this data because its not in the best interests of Apple to pay for statics showing they market is disproportionally skewed and its not in Microsoft's best interests to correct public perception about the differences between market share and install base as they would prefer that people believe that 95% of the computers out there run Windows.While this is in fact great news... I would guesstimate that the Mac's install base in Japan is only 30%, but as long as misperceptions about market share and install base continue to go unchecked, its probably best to let Apple have misperceptions benefit Apple for once rather than have them solely benefit Microsoft.
daftmanNov 14, 2007
> The market share argument is also not important because market share doesn't always equate to quality either. McDonalds is proof of that.Actually market share argument is VERY important especially when we are talking about SALES FIGURE.If we are talking about quality then there might be some debates and I would bring in Linux as well but we're not.
danielwsmitheeNov 14, 2007
I'm forced to buy about ten licenses per year at work.
scottbookg4Nov 14, 2007
Another interesting point that should be made is how do you account for the Macs that sell with the user intending to forgo OS X and install Windows XP/Vista as the primary OS? Linux?
chesscatNov 14, 2007
By the way, it's 'it's' not it. Speak English much?
bassman12593Nov 17, 2007
well yeah i can get to the store and places in my plymouth. Why should i want a ferrari?BECAUSE ITS BETTER!!i think the same concept applies here
mik3ctJun 24, 2008
That doesn't mean AT ALL that 54% or more of Japanese use OS X over XP/VS. Almost all popular PC games in Japan are not supported for Mac. Not even Apple's iPod is as popular in Japan, because most people prefer their mobile phones for their music device.
slatz77Mar 9, 2009
dumb terminals, how true...<a class="user" href="http://www.seo-webz.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.seo-webz.com</a>
johnuxNov 11, 2009
I really enjoyed your comment until you chose to say: 'its probably best to let Apple have misperceptions benefit Apple for once rather than have them solely benefit Microsoft." Regardless of my opinion, that is biased.You sounded so informative and objective before that.