Mountain Lion off to a strong start, say analysts

Published Jul 27 2012, 22:55 BST  |  By Scott Nichols

Apple's latest Mac operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, has seen strong initial downloads according to analysts.

Analytics firm Chitika has found that 3.2% of Mac users have upgraded to Mountain Lion in the first 48 hours since it released.

While Apple has not released official numbers for Mountain Lion downloads, last month the firm said that there are over 66 million Mac users, meaning an estimated 2.1 million users have upgraded to Mountain Lion.

As a comparison, Apple last year stated that OS X Lion reached one million downloads in its first day of release.

Chitika also found that the largest segment of Mac owners, 45.5%, still use OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard.

All users running systems on OS X version 10.6.8 or higher are eligible for an upgrade to Mountain Lion, which is expected to lead to many of those users converting to Mountain Lion.

OS X Lion received mixed reviews, which likely stopped many users from upgrading, but with a positive response and low price Mountain Lion is expected to fare much better.

Mountain Lion brings more than 200 new features to Mac users including closer integration of Apple's iCloud storage, Twitter integration, Notification Centre, iMessages and Gatekeeper security.

OS X Mountain Lion is available now to buy from the Mac App Store. It requires users to have Lion or Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6.8 or later) installed, along with 2GB of memory and 8GB of available space.