News: More iOS Traffic Than Mac OS X

Well, it’s a bit unsurprising that this day would come, but it looks like there’s more iOS devices running around on the Internet than Macs. Obviously, the numbers are actual devices in use and not that Blue Dalmatian iMac G3 sitting in your closet. According to CNet, Chitika, a web advertising company, conducted a study across its online advertising network.

Chitika’s study doesn’t cover every device out there, nor is it definitive, but it does feature a pretty large sample size and is a pretty interesting indicator of the things to come:

Given the record breaking mobile device sales reported by Apple in 2011 compared to their relatively low volume of PC units shipped, is Apple on the edge of cannibalizing its potential desktop market by focusing on its mobile device product mix? To investigate this trend, Chitika Insights compared overall web traffic market share of iOS and Mac OS.

To quantify this study, Chitika Insights analyzed 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). The user agents of individual impressions were then aggregated to determine relative overall share of the different operating systems. Our theory proved true as seen in the graph below:

The data shows that the web market shares of iOS and OS X have been converging steadily since August. iOS has been posting regular gains, and has experienced an overall growth of nearly 50%, whereas OS X has seen its market share decline by 25% since a high point in September. February marks the first point where a reversal in position can be seen in the respective operating systems. iOS passes Mac OS with 8.15% of all web traffic, whereas Mac OS only sees 7.96%.

This isn’t surprising and probably likely to grow once more people get their hands on iPhones and iPads. While a household may have only one or two Macs, every family member would have at least one iOS device.