This is an impressive achievement! The market for personal computers has grown so fast that it is a tribute to Apple that it has singlehandedly increased its market share against all the other vendors of Windows-based computers combined.īut – it’s probably not the chart you expected, is it? Apple’s market share has grown from three or four per cent to slightly more than six percent. If you were to extend that chart back in time, you would discover that Apple’s line at the bottom has been flat roughly since the dawn of modern computing.
The flat pink line at the bottom is Mac OS X.Īpple’s global market share for desktop/notebook operating systems is currently 6.5%.
iPhones define the smartphone market, even if they do not completely dominate it now that Android has taken the lead in market share. With more affordable devices on the way that are geared at first line workers and education, Microsoft may be able to buck current trends.Apple’s brilliant success since Steve Jobs returned in 1997 has made it the largest company in the world by almost any measure, with a market capitalization that exceeds Microsoft and Intel combined. Commercial markets include education and enterprise industries looking for sub-$600 PCs for students in the classroom or first line workers." In his breakdown of Windows 10X, our senior editor Zac Bowden states that "Windows 10X will launch this spring first for commercial markets. Microsoft is working on Windows 10X, which may help it compete with budget-friendly Chromebooks. It's likely that this shift contributed to the growth of Chrome OS over 2020.Īs people continue to work and study from home, we'll have to see if these trends continue. With millions of people working and studying from home due to a global pandemic, people's computing needs rapidly shifted. While macOS widened its lead over Chrome OS in Q4 2019, Chrome OS came roaring back in Q4 2020.Ģ020 was a unique year in terms of personal computing.
The Q4 results are particularly notable as the fourth quarter tends to be the biggest for PC shipments. Q3 2020 and Q4 2020 confirmed the trend: Windows dropped further to 78.9% for Q3 and then 76.7% for Q4 macOS grew to 8.4% for Q3 and then fell back to 7.7% for Q4, while Chrome OS had 11.5% for Q3 and then 14.4% share for Q4. But in Q2 2020, Windows fell to 81.7%, macOS grew to 7.6%, and Chrome OS jumped to 10.0%. In Q1 2020, Apple and Google were neck-and-neck: Windows grabbed 87.5% market share, macOS took 5.8%, and Chrome OS captured 5.3%.
Note that these figures are not cumulative, instead indicating figures of each respective quarter: Geekwire breaks down the figures on a quarterly basis as well. Windows still has a sizeable lead over Chrome OS and macOS, even if the latter two are combined, but a drop of almost 5% in a year is notable. Chrome OS market share went up from 6.4% to 10.8% in that same span. Windows market share dropped from 85.4% in 2019 to 80.5% in 2020.