OS web wars: it's still a two-horse race

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 03 March 2009 06:18

Business IT - Networking

If web browser stats are anything to go by, Windows and Mac OS X are still the only operating systems with more than one percent of the installed base. Linux is growing faster than Mac OS X, but from such a small base that it's hardly worth bothering about.

Net Applications provides monthly statistics that reveal how people visit its clients' web sites - the Market Share report.

The latest figures - for February 2009 - show that while other platforms continue to eat into Windows' dominance, it still accounts for over 88 percent of web usage.

That's a drop of five percentage points over two years.

Most of that is accounted for by growth in Mac usage, with Linux gaining less than half a percentage point.

Indeed, iPhone use has grown by the same 0.48 percentage points in 20 months.

Other platforms showing strong but as yet insignificant growth include Windows Mobile (up from 0.03 percent to 0.05 percent in two years) and PlayStation (rising from 0.02 percent to 0.04 percent in the same period).

What about other mobile devices? Please read on.