Apple making big inroads in business with OS X

Jupiter Research reports "Apple Computer’s UNIX-based Mac OS X operating system is making inroads in the business community, according to a report by market research firm Jupiter Research. The report tracks desktop and server operating systems in medium to large sized business.

The report found that in businesses with 250 employees or more, 17 percent of the employees were running Mac OS X on their desktop computer at work. In Businesses that had 10,000 or more employees, 21 percent of employees used Mac OS X on their desktop work computer.

Mac OS X Server is also doing well with businesses. Nine percent of companies with 250 employees or more used Mac OS X Server, while 14 percent of companies with 10,000 employees or more used Apple’s Server software."

Please be advised that this is the dumbest, least believable piece of market research that I have seen in years, and I know market research. It should not have been published, and leads me to seriously question the lack of quality control at Jupiter Research.

My logic in debunking this garbage research is simple:
1. There are more business machines sold than consumer machines.
2. The industry counters say about 49 million machines shipped last quarter worldwide.
3. Apple shipped north of 1 million Macs last quarter, and OS X only runs on Macs (and a few Intel machines in the Apple R&D labs).
4. Apple's PC market share over the past year has grown from roughly 2.5% to 3.5%. Dell's market share is estimated at under 19%.
5. So how is it that 17-21% of medium and large business users are using Macs as Jupiter reports? There is not a single CIO in an F1000 company that will verify these munbers.

Now that my rant is over, I can agree that Apple is indeed modestly picking up market share in businesses, and the company's strong performance of late is likely to drive more demand over time. OS X is a viable competitor to Microsoft's Windows and Linux desktops. However, the Mac installed base is more like an order of magnitude smaller than Jupiter reports.