Mountain Lion now on 3.2 percent of Macs, firm says
According to Chitika, more than 2 million Mac users are now running Apple's newest version of OS X, which came out earlier this week.
Apple has not yet released sales numbers for its Mountain Lion operating system, but a new report suggests it's off to a stronger start than predecessors.
Advertising and analytics company Chitika today says that 3.2 percent of Macs are now running Mountain Lion, Apple's latest release of OS X that went on sale Wednesday. By comparison, the firm says it took Lion (the previous OS X release) three months to get a 14 percent share.
"It is rather impressive for an operating system to capture 3.2 percent of market web usage after just 48 hours on the market," the company said in a blog post about its research. "Such figures are likely supported by a relatively low price point for the operating system as well as an expansive list of desired feature improvements."
As a frame of reference, Apple said that more than 1 million users downloaded Lion in the first 24 hours after its release last July. By Chitika's math, roughly 2.24 million downloaded and installed the software in 48 hours.
At $19.99, Mountain Lion is the lowest-priced paid operating system update from Apple in recent years. With previous versions, Apple typically charged $129 for an update every two years, later cutting the price down to $29 when releases came closer together, or -- in Snow Leopard's case -- became more about under-the-hood improvements than major new features.
In June, Apple said there were more than 66 million users running its Mac operating system. For people who bought a Mac between mid-June, when the company announced Mountain Lion's July availability at its annual developers conference, and this week's release of Mountain Lion, Apple is providing a free update of the software. It remains unclear how many of the downloads that Chitika noted are from those users, versus existing users who simply paid for upgrades.
