how many people use macs???

[plwrght]

does anyone know the percentage of overall computer users that own a mac?

[iGary]

~4%-5%

[iMeowbot]

No one really has good current numbers.

Here (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=1554886&postcount=17) is one place where I did post a collection of some recent and not-so-recent numbers that might help give you a general idea.

[hcuar]

~4%-5%

That's marketshare. Actual usage is much higher due to the low turnover rate of machines. Macs tend to last much longer than Wintel machines. Marketshare is only representative of how many people have purchased Macs this year new.

[iMeowbot]

The market share and installed base are within a point or two of each other, so for practical purposes they are the same. There really isn't any data out there to support the notion that Macs last any longer than other computers on average. Even if they do last a year or two longer, the share is small enough that the difference ends up as noise.

The percentage of machines sold by Dell to businesses tells nothing at all about overall PC placement in the home, because Dell themselves only have about 18% market share: 82% of computers are sold by others.

[mduser63]

That's marketshare. Actual usage is much higher due to the low turnover rate of machines. Macs tend to last much longer than Wintel machines. Marketshare is only representative of how many people have purchased Macs this year new.

It's also distorted by the fact that corporate buyers are figured into marketshare. Michael Dell recently said that around 85% of Dell's sales are to business, not home users. If you talk about marketshare among home users, Macs would be much better represented. Finally, a lot of Mac users also have PCs, which inflates PC marketshare numbers, but I don't know by how much.

[radiantm3]

Do they include servers into that estimation? That would skew the numbers as well if they did.

[jayscheuerle]

I wonder what percent of people have Macs as their HOME machine, that being the machine they buy themselves, out of choice.

What's Macs personal choice percentage?

[plinden]

I can't speak for worldwide, but looking at the access logs for a Java webapp I worked on, that's been running for a while in Australia, I saw the following:
Windows (various versions) 96%
Mac 3%
Linux 0.5%
Other 0.5%

Other was mostly Solaris.

[2jaded2care]

Would also suspect that Macs are skewed more toward education and arts-related industries. Probably not so much accountants or hardcore gamers. At least that's my impression based on personal observation.

[iMeowbot]

As a weird little tidbit, with the number of Macs out there currently around 30 million, that's also the number of Internet users there were worldwide as recently as 1996!

[rdowns]

11.5% of visitors to my web site (pretty high volume business site) are Mac users.

[mduser63]

4.1% of visitors to my site in the last month are using Macs, doesn't mean much though, because my website is a fan site for a game that is (mostly) a PC game so of course not as many Mac users would be inclined to visit it.

[thequicksilver]

In the US, you're probably looking at anywhere between 5 and about 8% of computers actively used. In Western Europe and Japan you're looking at nearer 3 or 4%. Australia I have no idea.

Because of the relative paucity of language localisations (IIRC OS X is only translated into about twelve other languages, most of which are those of rich Western European countries such as Dutch, French, Swedish, German etc) Apple doesn't really have a much market for its computers in large countries such as China, Russia, and India, as well as the whole of the Arabic speaking world. It's this which reduces its overall worldwide numbers down to typical 2% or so that you read in the press.

If you look at Apple's numbers in countries where they have the local language translation and where they also actively market and sell the Mac, a figure of 4-5% is more appropriate.

[altair]

I'd say about 14 people use them, mabey 15 if you count my little brother