It’s a marketing war, I tell you. So probably I’m part of the reason why Microsoft and Windows Vista gained some points in the OS market share with my purchase of a laptop with a bundled Vista Home Basic (sucks!). In any case, my purchase made a stat point in Vista’s gain of 3/4 of a percentage point from April at the end May. Mac OS X also enjoyed a gain for their camp.

By the end of May, Vista accounted for 3.74% of all operating systems on machines connecting to Net Applications Inc.’s clients’ Web sites. The total share for Mac OS X — which included older editions running on PowerPC processors, as well as Version 10.4, or “Tiger,” on Intel-powered Macs — was 6.46%. Vista was up about three quarters of a percentage point from April, while Mac OS X was up a quarter of a point.

The big reason why Vista racked in points is quite simple – new PC purchases with OEM-bundled Vistas. Sure, I had a choice on which OS to put on my laptop, but hey, that’s still a Genuine Vista sticker slapped on my laptop, so why throw it away, right? I mean I could always “upgrade” to Linux and keep my Vista installer for future use. Still, it’s a Vista considered sold.

As for the browser wars, our favorite browser, Firefox, slipped by almost a percentage point last month. Competitors IE7 and Safari climbed a few notches.

…Firefox experienced it’s largest slip in browser market share since Net Applications began tracking the open-source software in late 2004. Firefox’s share fell from 15.42% in April to 14.54% last month. Its loss was mostly Internet Explorer’s gain — IE 7’s share climbed by 0.70% — although Apple’s own Safari browser also benefited; its share was up 0.23% in May to 4.82%.

With Safari entering the Windows scene, who knows how things will shape up. As for now, I’m still a die-hard Firefoxer.

Via Computerworld (Stats are based on a Net Applications survey)