The Mac operating system in December made a stronger showing among users accessing the Web, according to preliminary figures from Net Applications.
For the month of December, the Mac OS accounted for 9.63 percent of what Net Applications calls market share of Internet usage, a second-place showing. The iPhone, broken out separately, logged 0.44 percent, good enough for fourth place, just ahead of the Sony's PlayStation. That puts the overall Apple share at just over 10 percent.
The percentage for Mac OS X is a record, up slightly from November but also up 32 percent from December 2007, according to Fortune's report on Net Applications' findings, which are based on browser data. The iPhone's toehold also is a record, more than tripling its December 2007 figure of 0.12 percent.
Windows continues to be the elephant in the room. It accounted for 88.68 percent of Web hits, according to the Operating System Market Share chart on the Net Applications site.
Third place went to the Linux operating system, with 0.85 percent. Other free or open-source operating systems, including FreeBSD and AIX, each accounted for 0.01 percent or less.
One caveat from Net Applications:
The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage. This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage.
As the Fortune account points out, "Hidden in these monthly figures are the sharp spikes recorded by Apple's mobile devices around the holidays."
Net Applications accumulates its data from 160 million monthly visitors to its network of hosted Web site statistics.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.com.
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