iOS Outstrips Mac OS Share of Web Traffic

Advertising analytics firm Chitika Insights’ Gabe Donnini reports that according to IDC metrics, in 2011 Apple shipped 93.2 iPhone units and 40 million+ iPads, noting that in Q4 alone, Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones, 11.12 million iPads, and 6.62 million iPods, but only 4.89 million Macs.

Donnini deduces that more than ever, mobile devices are playing a key role in the lives of consumers and will likely become the predominant method for consumers to access and interact with the web in the near future, which has to have implications for the computing industry.

To investigate whether Apple is on the edge of cannibalizing its desktop market by focusing on its mobile device product mix, Chitika Insights compared overall web traffic market share of iOS and Mac OS, analyzing several data sets composed of a series of US traffic taken from August 2011 to February 2012 out of the Chitika Ad Network (covering hundreds of millions of ad impressions). User agents of individual impressions were then aggregated to determine relative overall share of the different operating systems. The theory proved true as seen in the graph below.

Donnini notes that the data track web market shares of iOS and OS X converging steadily since August, iOS posting regular gains, and experiencing an overall growth of nearly 50%, while OS X’s market share has declined by 25% since September. February marks first time the iOS has passed the Mac OS, accounting for 8.15% of all web traffic compared with the Mac OS logging 7.96%.

Analyzing these findings, Donnini suggests that they indicate more consumers choosing to go mobile instead of purchasing more expensive Apple computers.

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