Mavericks Reaches 5.5% Of North American OS X Web Traffic In 24 Hours

OS X Mavericks operating system already accounts for 5.5 percent of North American web traffic from Apple’s operating systems just 24 hours after release, ad tracking firm Chitika tells us. The rate of adoption easily surpasses OS X Mountain Lion which hit 1.6% over the same period following its debut.

Note that this is a measurement of Apple’s OS X web share specifically, not an overall measurement of traffic from all operating systems. It’s simply a notation of how fast Apple has managed to get folks to upgrade to its new OS.

Obviously making Mavericks free spurred adoption massively this time around, and the curves of adoption here look a lot like Apple’s iOS 7, which already accounted for a majority of iOS installs just a few days after release. We’ve written about Apple’s move to make Mavericks free and the gauntlet that it throws to competitors like Microsoft – but adoption rates are very clearly another great byproduct of the decision.

“Pre-release OS X Mavericks exhibited low levels of usage due to beta-version activity from developers,” says Chitika. “24 hours following Mavericks’ public release the afternoon of October 22, adoption rates hit 5.5% of all Mac OS X Web traffic. This significantly outpaces OS X Mountain Lion, which took approximately four days to reach the same level.”

If you’re curious about methodology, Chitika sampled “millions of U.S. and Canadian Mac OS X-based online ad impressions running through the Chitika Ad Network.” The data used to make the chart was drawn from impressions catalogued across the time frame of October 22 through October 23, 2013.