Report: Apple sees leap in OS market share

Mac OS market share up by nearly 16 per cent in 2010, according to Gartner

Apple has increased its share of the OS market significantly as a result of innovation in the mobile sector, according to a Gartner report released today.

The Apple Mac OS market share grew by a hefty 15.8 per cent in 2010 while Apple's Mac OS revenue increased from $449m (£271m) to $520m (£314m) year on year.

Despite Apple's success, Microsoft still dominates the market with its Windows OS business, which saw revenues up 9.2 per cent in 2010.

Microsoft's market share increased from 77.9 per cent in 2009 to 78.6 per cent in 2010.

"Generally, client OSs outperformed server OSs and grew 9.3 per cent in 2010, while the server OS segment grew 5.7 per cent," said Matthew Cheung, principal research analyst at Gartner.

"The long pending demand for PC refreshment was unleashed as the economy stepped out of the economic turndown, driving growth of client OSs."

Red Hat dominated the commercial Linux server market, with revenues up 18.6 per cent to $592m (£357m) in 2010 - a 58.2 per cent share of the Linux server market.