Adoption of Apple’s latest version of OS X stalled in October following a strong start that saw OS X Lion downloaded more than 1 million times during its first day of availability this past July. Ad network Chitika analyzed its recent traffic and found that Lion’s share among all operating systems is just over 1.5%, barely a blip on the radar. Usage of the new OS had grown at an average rate of 4.05% each month between June and September, but since then its share has increased at an average rate of just 0.98% per month. Read on for more.
Lion’s growth in usage share among other versions of OS X also fails to impress. Chitika reported in late September that Lion’s usage share had climbed to 14.18% since launching, as Snow Leopard dipped to a 55.5% usage share. In just over a month since that report, Lion gained less than 2 percentage points to reach 16% and, surprisingly perhaps, Snow Leopard’s usage share increased half a point to 56%.
“Apple’s ‘most advanced’ operating system OS X Lion (formally OS X 10.7) hasn’t exactly been their most popular release,” Chitika’s Ryan Cavanagh wrote on the company’s blog. “According to Apple’s Press page, Lion sales were hot over the first few days, even seeing over one million downloads in the first day. However, since then the latest version of OS X has faced criticism from both users and reviewers alike.”
Cavanagh suggests that issues such as Wi-Fi instability and poor battery performance on MacBook Pro models could be among the causes of hesitation among Mac users. “Lion’s adoption rate has been less than stellar, to say the least,” Cavanagh added. “While we are seeing consistent monthly growth, Lion isn’t taking off the way some had anticipated.”
