Survey: Mac OS hit record 7.3% share in December; iPhone up 33%

Reflecting strong holiday sales of both MacBooks and iPhones, Apple's (AAPL) market share grew sharply in December, as measured by a Net Applications survey released today.

The Mac hit a record 7.3% share, up from 6.8% last month. The iPhone also hit a new record, .12%, up from .09% in November. That suggests that better than 1 out of every 1,000 people on the Internet are browsing the Web using an iPhone.

Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows still dominates, with a 91.8% share as measured by the Web metrics company. But it lost ground in December, as it has for seven of the past 11 months.

The Mac OS share, by contrast, grew 7.4% in the past month, nearly double November's rate. The iPhone grew even more sharply, jumping 33% over November's numbers. Only the Playstation (.02% share) grew faster, albeit from a much smaller base.

Net Applications' monthly surveys do not measure market share in terms of computer systems sold. Rather, they sample data from visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by the firm's clients. As such, the findings are probably better described as a snapshot of installed base taken from a less-than-random sample. But the results tend to correspond well to domestic market share as measured by more traditional market survey firms like IDC and Gartner. To see Net Application's full report, click here.

The Linux operating system also showed strong growth (up better than 10% to hit a .63% share), as did "other," a category that includes the iPod touch, Web TV and the Nintendo Wii.

The results are summarized in the table below: