Mountain Lion grabs 3% share of OS X in first 48 hours

Apple's OS X Mountain Lion is off to a solid start in its first 48 hours and now powers more than 3% of all Macs, an online advertising network said today.

Chitika, which regularly mines its ad impression data for trends in operating system and browser usage, reported Friday that two days after its introduction, OS X Mountain Lion accounted for 3.2% of all versions of Apple's operating system.

OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, retained the top spot in Chitika's ranking with a 45.5% share, while Lion, or version 10.7, accounted for 35%.

In an email touting its findings, Chitika characterized Mountain Lion's 3.2% as "rather impressive," and predicted that the new OS would "do much better" than its 2011 predecessor, Lion.

Other Web measurement firms have not corroborated Chitika's data. Irish analytics company StatCounter does not break out individual OS X versions and U.S.-based Net Applications does not automatically disclose its daily numbers to the public or the press. Read more...