OS X Lion growth stagnates at 16% Mac market share

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
The adoption rate of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion has seen a drastic slowdown after enjoying strong initial sales and is only running on 16% of Macs, giving it the third largest install base behind Snow Leopard and Leopard.



Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is being run on 16% of all Macs after seeing a highly successful launch, but sales have slowed to a crawl, barely outpacing adoption of Apple's previous version Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard which is installed on 56% of Macs, according to a study by analytics firm Chitika.



When Apple's newest Mac OS X launched in July, it saw booming sales topping one million downloads on launch day, with Apple calling it the company's fastest-selling OS ever.



The new study shows that, until September, Lion sales were consistent, seeing a 4.05% monthly growth rate, though that has slowed to an average rate of 0.98% over the past two months.







In early October, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced during his company's iPhone keynote that Lion was its best-selling OS to date, with an adoption rate surpassing its predecessor Snow Leopard by 80%, netting over six million downloads. Cook went on to compare the launch of Lion with Microsoft's Windows 7, which he said took 20 weeks to reach 10 percent of the PC install base, a feat Lion accomplished in just two weeks.



"The once hyped OS X Lion is now in a state of arrested development; they?re growing, but not nearly at the rate newly released operating systems have grown in the past," writes Chitika's Ryan Cavanagh in the company's blog. "Historically Mac users are quick to adopt the latest Apple software, as in the case with our iOS5 report, leading us to believe there are some real issues preventing users from making the $29.99 upgrade."



Cavanagh goes on to say that Lion's downtick in sales may be attributed to stability issues with the OS, and cites user complaints over iOS-like features that give would-be adopters pause when deciding to upgrade.







Lion is slowly gaining ground on Mac OS X Leopard, which holds a 22% share of the market, though it seems unlikely that it will overtake leader 10.6 Snow Leopard any time soon as the older OS also continues to increase its 56% share.

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 161
    First the iPhone, now Lion. Apple must be doomed.
  • Reply 2 of 161
    xsuxsu Posts: 401member
    The decision to sell a copy with install media only at much higher price probably have something to do with it.
  • Reply 3 of 161
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member
    deleted
  • Reply 4 of 161
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by xsu View Post


    The decision to sell a copy with install media only at much higher price probably have something to do with it.



    Yeah, Lion sure is expensive.



    $29.



    Yikes.
  • Reply 5 of 161
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    I suspect as the article says it's partly the iOS feature-creep that some don't like, along with removal of Rosetta, and perhaps even the lack of Java (although it's auto-installed when needed). Also, I bet quite a high proportion of people are refraining because they don't have access to a high speed connection to download, or simply prefer to have a physical copy of the OS. Paying much more for a USB version isn't going to help matters.



    Apple's always pushing technology forward, but perhaps a choice for Lion's install media would have been more appropriate. They could have tested the water with Lion, giving people a choice of DVD or App Store. 10.8 could then have been the time to let go of the old physical media installs.
  • Reply 6 of 161
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,753member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Pendergast View Post


    Yeah, Lion sure is expensive.



    $29.



    Yikes.



    You'll find it's $69 for the USB drive.
  • Reply 7 of 161
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    I'm not surprised that the interest has dropped significantly, but I am surprised it's only 16%. That being said, I do know of many users still on Lion or not updated to the latest version of SL where the Mac App Store existed, so perhaps that is holding off the decision. It also might be from people not being able to give DVDs to friends and family to use to install Lion. Sure, you can always sign in to Mac App Store and re-download it or burn a bootable disc with Disk Utility, but that's a little more effort than just hanging someone a jewel case.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Pendergast View Post


    Yeah, Lion sure is expensive.



    $29.



    Yikes.



    He'll come back with a comment about how Lion sold on a USB drive is more expensive. At which point I'll counter with: If there is no way to install the media then why would people buy Lion from the Mac App Store.



    The Mac App Store is quite nice for this because you can never lose the software, if you have to re-download you get the latest version without having to reinstall all the updates afterwards, and you still get the ability to burn to disc if you so desire.
  • Reply 8 of 161
    It doesn't support Rosetta applications.



    So, I run Lion in a virtual Machine - Parallels for now.
  • Reply 9 of 161
    Am I alone in thinking that this also has a lot to do with the fact that Lion requires a Core 2. All of my Apple computers in the house are running Core Duos. I have no need to buy new Macs right now because I don't require powerhouses for what I use them for. That said, I have bought all the latest operating systems from Tiger through Snow Leopard and would gladly update if I was physically able to.



    Just my two cents.
  • Reply 10 of 161
    I upgraded three macs to Lion and trying to figure out the best method to upgrade a 4th one. I need to run Snow Leopard for some old programs. Lion is a great OS. I am looking for a multiple disk enclosure that is bootable that can boot Snow Leopard with backup and back up Lion. I want to reduce the cable clutter behind this iMac.
  • Reply 11 of 161
    This report is kind of silly. Mac users get OS upgrades in two ways: they buy the disk (or obtain it somehow) or buy a new Mac. Mac users tend to purposely upgrade their OS at a faster clip than PC users, who tend to stay on the version of Windows their PC shipped with.



    So after this company's data suggests retail sales have leveled off (as they always have; Apple has reported Mac OS X sales are mostly sold in the first quarter or two), that Lion is now a failure.



    It then jumps to the absurd conclusion that the "downtick in sales may be attributed to stability issues with the OS," as if people are deciding not to upgrade. Lion is not less stable than Snow Leopard.



    There's also way more Macs shipping with Lion (that can't downgrade) than ever shipped with any other OS. Another 4.9 million this last quarter. The installed base of Macs is not that large--around 30-40 million. That means new Lion Macs are destined to rapidly displace old versions of the Mac OS, an hesitancy to upgrade is meaningless because new purchases are such a big percentage of the installed base. Compare new PCs sold quarterly to the 1 billion installed base - its not nearly as large.



    NetMarketshare shows that Lion has already well outpaced Leopard+Tiger, and is at 1.89% compared to Snow Leopard's 3.62% today. In other words, Lion is already #2 and more than half as big as the installed base of Snow Leopard machines.
  • Reply 12 of 161
    Mid 2011 MBP running snow leopard and it's just fine.. no real desire to upgrade.
  • Reply 13 of 161
    I have lion on one of my MacBooks, and there are some really brain dead decisions in this OS that hold me back upgrading the rest of my machines... Firstly I like the "natural scrolling", took a while to get used to it but I'm happy with it... But the lack of scroll bars by default is weird, the gestures are so vague I'm never quite sure what is going to happen when I make one on the trackpad... And finally the lockout from the boot disk makes life painful for the advanced user... Also I like a save option in my apps...



    Yeah lion is somewhat half baked, lots of good stuff with far too much bad :-/



    -edit- oh and why does Logic 8 not work from the desktop... Totally brain dead
  • Reply 14 of 161
    I'm also surprised that it is only 16%. However, I happen to be a bleeding edge kind of guy. But, I do know at least one friend who couldn't move to Lion because of one app that requires Rosetta. I imagine that it is a combination of that and not meeting minimal requirements that is holding many people back.
  • Reply 15 of 161
    bsenkabsenka Posts: 799member
    I'm not surprised at the low adoption rates.



    I'm sure the original 'download only' policy didn't help, following it with a more than 200% price increase for the USB stick wasn't much better either.



    Besides, outside of the Mac faithful, the reviews have been less than favorable. Even Macworld has spent considerable time talking/writing about stuff that Snow Leopard used to do well that is broken on Lion. They've done at least three podcasts on that topic alone! One of them was mostly dedicated to terminal hacks to restore features from Snow Leopard. I don't recall that happening (at least not to that degree) with any other Mac OS release.
  • Reply 16 of 161
    One word Adobe!



    I think I speak for most designers and developers that issues with Adobe after upgrading to lion. It may sound trivial but after reading the bug issues that adobe reports on its website of "known issues" is enough to keep me from upgrading.



    I have things to do that's why I bought a Mac. If I wanted to "trick" the operating system to do what I want it to, I would have bought a PC. I don't have time nor the patients to beta test an operating system that is available for retail.



    Nothig personal apple I love yah :-) but I'm sure that others in the design world feel the same way I do. If I'm not mistaken the design market is a fairly large percentage...



    http://www.obxwebdesigner.com
  • Reply 17 of 161
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Pendergast View Post


    Yeah, Lion sure is expensive.

    $29.

    Yikes.



    Yea, plus $900 for me to upgrade my old PPC software. Worth it in the end, but Lion plus iCloud vs MobileMe is a lot all at once...
  • Reply 18 of 161
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    So Apple went download-only, a HUGE shift, and yet Lion's adoption curve is still exceeding that of its highly successful predecessor? "barely outpacing” is still outpacing! Not bad.



    (Granted, for $69 you can have it on a thumbdrive, still WAY cheaper than Windows. So not quite “download only.”)





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by obxwebdesigner View Post


    One word Adobe!



    I think I speak for most designers and developers that issues with Adobe after upgrading to lion. It may sound trivial but after reading the bug issues that adobe reports on its website of "known issues" is enough to keep me from upgrading.



    If you’re suggesting that Adobe had PLENTY of time to find and fix criticial issues before Lion came out, via the same developer program everyone else uses, then you’re right. Sometimes I don’t know what’s wrong with Adobe. (I’m still on CS3... most of which runs fine in Lion. Not all. But thankfully, I’m fully operational without the missing pieces. Photoshop and Flash CS3 have been fine. I await CS6!)



    If you’re suggesting that when Adobe drags their feet, Apple should hold back releasing their OS until Adobe fixes everying... well, that way lies doom. Not practical, even if Adobe ever DID fix the bugs you care about, which may or may not ever happen (look how bad Flash remains year after year). Not only would Apple lose tons of money and set their own innovation back for Adobe’s sake, but non-Adobe users would suffer the same delay as Adobe users! Better to release Lion to the world when it’s ready, let non-Adobe users have it as soon as they want, and pros can check with the vendors of their key apps before updating to new machines or new OS versions (as is standard business practice).
  • Reply 19 of 161
    tbelltbell Posts: 3,146member
    Apple used to charge $129 for a major update. That included a box disk. It provided a single user a license. For a family license, Apple charged $199. Now you get the same caliber of update for $29. If you really need a hard copy, you can get that for $69. This license allows you install the OS on any computer using the same Apple ID. I'd say Apple is being more the generous. For proof, go compare Apple's options to the options Microsoft gives. Apple rocks.



    Apple is giving people the price break because it doesn't want to ship physical media. With physical media, Apple has to pay more for shipping, packaging, an handling. Further, it has to price the update high enough for third parties selling the physical media to make some sort of profit. Finally, Apple has to account for unsold inventory every quarter, which negatively effects earnings.



    You might be right about the delivery method being an issue for some people, but paying $69 for an update that several years ago people would have happily paid $129 seems a bit silly.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Elijahg View Post


    I suspect as the article says it's partly the iOS feature-creep that some don't like, along with removal of Rosetta, and perhaps even the lack of Java (although it's auto-installed when needed). Also, I bet quite a high proportion of people are refraining because they don't have access to a high speed connection to download, or simply prefer to have a physical copy of the OS. Paying much more for a USB version isn't going to help matters.



    Apple's always pushing technology forward, but perhaps a choice for Lion's install media would have been more appropriate. They could have tested the water with Lion, giving people a choice of DVD or App Store. 10.8 could then have been the time to let go of the old physical media installs.



  • Reply 20 of 161
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    I don't think its any of the complicated reasons. Its the same reason so many people still use XP.



    There isn't much motivation to upgrade.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Elijahg View Post


    I suspect as the article says it's partly the iOS feature-creep that some don't like, along with removal of Rosetta, and perhaps even the lack of Java (although it's auto-installed when needed). Also, I bet quite a high proportion of people are refraining because they don't have access to a high speed connection to download, or simply prefer to have a physical copy of the OS. Paying much more for a USB version isn't going to help matters.



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