What are the current and projected Apple Operating System Demographics
?
Specifically, If the entire Mac Marketshare is 5% (Zeitgeist), What is
the estimated market share of Mac's running (A) OS 9.2.1 or earlier,
(B) OS 9.2.2, (C) OSX < 10.2, (D) 10.2 or higher.

Hello. I am posting this as a comment because I don’t feel it’s a
complete answer yet, and I’m too tired to keep looking. If nobody else
takes up the challenge and answers, I’ll come back.

A MacWorld reader poll includes a question regarding the O/S.
http://www.macworld.com/2002/05/24/osx-poll.html
“Question 5: Which of the following is the default operating system on
your Mac?…”
31% defaulted to OS X, 62% to 9, 7% in 8, and less then ½ a percent in
7 or lower,

From Macinstein's Daily Mac News & Commentary
quoting figures from May 6, 2002.
http://www.macinstein.com/pressrelease.cfm?ID=1165
"4 percent of running Macs are using OS X."

From Allied Computing
http://www.alliedcomputing.com/default.php?news_id=50
"Of the total Mac installed base of about 32 million units, at least 3
million have installed and are running OS X as their primary operating
system. That's pushing the 10% penetration..."

From cnet.com, quoting Steve Jobs:
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-899914.html?tag=bplst
"...but expects 5 million people to be using the OS by year's end."
"Apple estimates that only about 1.5 million to 2 million Mac owners
are using OS X today even though 3 million Macs have sold with the
operating system."

There's a chart posted here:
http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/02/0112.html
which describes the sites visitors and breaks it down into Classic and
OS X visits.

A Jobs quote from the end of July, 2002:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/07/24/macworld_nyc.html?page=3
"...He said that 20 percent of the install base is now running Mac OS
X"

Not promising!
http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/statistics.shtml
“The truth is, we'll never have precise figures comparing Mac OS,
Linux, Windows, and other market share or installed base”


Search strategies:
google.ca -- apple OS percentage
google.ca -- mac os installed base percentage
google.ca -- mac os running percentage

sparky4ca-ga

I think I have some fairly good information for you but nothing as
specific as you have stated, and I searched for over an hour. Some of
this information is similar to what sparky came up with. Can I post
this as an answer? I belive there isn't really any more detailed data
out there.

Firstly, this site [
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0201/09.marketshare.php ] shows
estimates of total mac os market share being slightly less than 3%:

"WebSideStory, a provider of outsourced e-business intelligence
services, is reporting that the global market share for the Mac
operating system has remained at less than 3 percent since January
1999. As of Jan. 2, 2002, it was 2.32 percent, compared to Microsoft's
96.28 percent as of the same date, according to WebSideStory's
StatMarket, a source for data on global Internet user trends. Usage
share is the percentage of Internet surfers that are using a
particular operating system."

One interesting piece of information from Steve Job's keynote speech
from the apple worldwide developers conference [
http://199.250.191.242/mmo/articles/WWDC2002/WWDC2002.html ] stated
that "Jobs announced that while Mac OS 9 is still alive for consumers,
Apple has now stopped all development for Mac OS 9 with everything
they now develop being for Mac OS X only and are encouraging
developers to follow suit."

From an article on news.com.com [
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-899914.html ], it was reported that
"Although Apple would like developers to think of OS 9 as "dearly
departed," in fact OS 9 and earlier versions are used on the vast
majority of the 25 million Macs in service.

Looking to sell developers on the importance of developing for OS X,
Jobs said that Apple entered 2002 with about 1 million active OS X
users but expects 5 million people to be using the OS by year's end. "

Later on in the article, it states that "Apple estimates that only
about 1.5 million to 2 million Mac owners are using OS X today even
though 3 million Macs have sold with the operating system."

The problem is getting up-to-date data.  Many of those links are for
articles that came out awhile ago.  Since then, 10.2 was released and
has proven to be pretty popular.  Additionally, newer Macs ship with
(I believe) X as the only OS (although things can still run in the
classic environment).   it may be a little while longer before more
accurate info is out that tells how many have decided to stick with
10.2.

exactly right leep. most of the articles i found came out before 10.2 even existed.