Is Apple’s iOS platform doing more Web surfing than the Mac OS platform? The argument in the affirmative has some new evidence, in the form of a study showing there are now more ad impressions being received on Apple tablets and smartphones than on desktops and laptops.
The report, from advertising company Chitika, looked at data sets of U.S. traffic from August of last year to this month for the Chitika Ad Network, which covers hundreds of millions of ad impressions. Aggregating the user agents, Chitika was able to determine the relative overall share of various operating systems.
Apple the Cannibal
The data indicated that the relative traffic volumes have been converging since last August, with iOS showing overall growth of nearly 50 percent, while OS X has dropped in market share by 25 percent since a September high point. This month, iOS passed OS X for the first time, showing 8.15 percent of all Web traffic, while OS X had 7.96 percent.
Given the legendary loyalty of Mac users, Chitika asked in its report why Mac might be experiencing a market share drop in ad impressions.
One obvious factor is the much larger number of iOS device sales compared with Mac. In the fourth quarter of last year, for example, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, 15.43 million iPads, 15.4 million iPods, but only 5.2 million Macs.
Chitika’s data only gives a partial view of the landscape, since the data is derived entirely from its network, and its network is primarily directed at mobile devices. Other companies, analyzing their traffic data, have found that Macs outnumber iOS devices in surfing their Web sites, for instance.
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