OSX Growing Faster Than Windows? Not Really.

Apple is beating Microsoft in operating system market share growth! Which means we're but scant years away from an Apple-dominated world in servers and desktops, right? Not really.
The latest update from Gartner has led to a few fun headlines but, for the most part, Apple's growth in OS market share is more a noteworthy talking point than a realistic assault against Microsoft's entrenched Windows operating system.
Here's why. It's true: The latest Gartner figures for worldwide operating system market share do place Apple's growth above rival Microsoft's–Linux beats out Microsoft in growth between 2009 and 2010 as well.
Gartner is calculating these numbers based on the total revenue generated by a company's operating systems for 2009 sales and 2010 sales. Within this time period, Apple jumped from a total revenue figure of $449 million dollars to $520 million, or the 15.8 percent growth that Gartner correctly reports. Microsoft, in contrast, jumped from a (mere) revenue figure of $21.9 billion dollars to $23.8 billion dollars–a growth of only around 8.8 percent. Voila—Apple wins!
But if you look at the statistics for market share, the numbers tell a little bit different of a story. Apple's market share rose from 1.6 to 1.7 percent between 2009 and 2010, or a difference of one-tenth of a percent. Microsoft, in contrast, increased its market share from 77.9 percent to 78.6 percent. That's a difference of seven-tenths of a percent. Apple might have sold more desktops and laptops featuring its operating system between 2009 and 2010, but Microsoft actually gained more market share, in total, than Apple.

Of course, we're ignoring the elephant in the room: It's a bit erroneous to suggest that Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, has, "beat Gates in every category but one: overall market penetration. And even that may be changing," as ReadWriteWeb's Klint Finley puts it. Microsoft still enjoys a commanding lead in its operating system market share and operating system revenue over every other competitor—twelve times the revenue of second-place competitor IBM over 2010.
That said, Apple has managed to push past Microsoft in raw profits. According to the figures from most recent quarterly statements announced by both companies, Apple reported $5.99 billion in profit to Microsoft's $5.23 billion for the second quarter of 2011. Similarly, Apple's revenue generation was at $24.67 billion to Microsoft's $16.43–and you can thank Apple's iPhone business for most of these statistics.
But Apple's OSX topping Microsoft Windows? Gartner's figures combine consumer and server editions of operating systems together, which naturally pushes in Microsoft's favor. But even if we were to eliminate that from the equation, Apple still has a long way to go to before OSX "takes over" the modern computing era.

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