"Apple Inc.'s install base of Mac OS X users will be approximately 22 million strong come the end of March, ahead of the company's next-generation Leopard operating system release, according to analysts at Bank of America Securities," reports Apple Insider.
The figure is up by 6 million users since the Mac maker unwrapped its last major revision to the Mac operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, back in June of 2005, analyst Keith Bachman told clients in research distributed earlier this week.
What the story doesn't ask is whether this will be more than Windows Vista. Windows ships roughly 20 million copies a month, but I'd assume a lot of people are still getting Windows XP. Also, although tens of millions of corporate users have "paid for" Vista (they get free upgrades under software assurance contracts), I'd guess very few have installed it. Corporate IT departments are notoriously slow, and I gather one UK newspaper is only just rolling out Windows XP.
