Apple: Mac OS X Installed User Base Tripled in 2 Years

No sooner had Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller taken the keynote stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) before he announced that Apple has tripled its active user base in the past two years.

Schiller produced a chart showing the number of actual active Mac OS X users from 2002 – 2007. By the end of 2007 Apple counted about 25 million active Mac OS X users.

In the past two years, there’s been a “huge spike” of new users, according to Schiller, and Apple has seen the user base grow from 25 million to near 75 million users today, in 2009.

“No wonder everybody’s trying to race behind us and follow in our footsteps,” quipped Schiller.

The keynote presentation also included introduction of new models of the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops and a new version of Safari to ship with Snow Leopard, the OS X update.   See PC World’s live blog coverage of the opening of the WWDC and ongoing reports of announcements.