Net Applications: Apple just lost half its ‘market share’
The so-called market share reports issued every month by Net Applications have long been controversial — mostly because they didn't actually measure market share (which business people typically express as the number of widgets …
Context & Ripple Effects
Net Applications’ figures had already produced a mixed Apple narrative: a reported February decline followed earlier claims of strong Mac growth and rapidly rising web-surfing share. A prior examination of Mac-share figures had also stressed the difficulty of treating web-usage measurements as conventional market share.
The key issue is measurement, not necessarily a sudden change in device sales. Net Applications’ monthly reports are controversial precisely because they track observed web activity rather than the installed base or units sold.
First-order effects
- Apple’s apparent position in Net Applications’ ranking is cut sharply, making that series a weaker standalone reference for Apple’s competitive standing.
- Net Applications faces greater scrutiny from analysts and publishers that had used its web-activity estimates as market-share evidence.
Second-order effects
- Analysts comparing Apple with PC vendors must separate changes in web-traffic measurement from changes in shipments or installed base, breaking simple month-to-month trendlines.
- Competing vendors lose an easy benchmark for framing relative gains or losses when the underlying metric can materially alter the reported result.
Third-order effects
- The episode points toward a more fragmented share-measurement market, where web usage, installed base, and sales are treated as distinct indicators rather than interchangeable measures of platform strength.
The trend: Technology-market reporting is moving toward closer scrutiny of proxy metrics, especially when web-usage data are presented as market share.