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By Jonathan Skillings, 3 February 2009 14:16

NEWS

January was a good month for both the emerging Windows 7 and the venerable Mac OS, according to web metrics company Net Applications.

The Mac OS is now hovering around the 10 per cent mark among operating systems accessing the web.

In its Operating System Market Share report for January, Net Applications showed the Mac OS at 9.93 per cent, up from 9.63 per cent in December. The iPhone also headed upward to 0.48 per cent in January, from 0.44 per cent in December.

Use of Windows 7, meanwhile, surged in January after Microsoft released the public beta of the operating system, the follow-on to Windows Vista that is due around the end of 2009.

The beta became available on 10 January, up to which point Windows 7 stood at about 0.04 per cent. Through most of the rest of the month, it fluctuated at between roughly 0.12 per cent and 0.15 per cent. It closed out the month with a jump to 0.23 per cent on 31 January, according to Net Applications.

That 31 January jump may have come from people who still thought that was the last day to get the beta. But about a week ago, Microsoft extended the window for downloads, saying the Windows 7 beta is available through 10 February.

But on the whole, Windows continued to inch downward. The Net Applications report for January, released on Sunday, put the Microsoft operating system at 88.26 per cent, down from 88.68 per cent in December, easily keeping Windows in the number one spot. Linux came in third at 0.83 per cent in January, essentially the same as its 0.85 per cent December showing.

Net Applications accumulates its data from 160 million monthly visitors to its network of hosted websites that collect statistics.