Pingdom (http://www.royal.pingdom.com) -- a site that covers Internet and online technology -- has examined operating system market share from across the globe using StatCounter web metrics data to find out where Macs are the most popular. And the winner is .... Switzerland with 17.61%.

Pingdom says the top 10 countries in terms of Mac market share: Switzerland, Luxembourg (15.79%), the United States (15.36%), Iceland (15.18%), Canada (14.03%), Australia (13.94%), New Zealand (12.84%), Norway (12.14%), Denmark (11.71%) and Singapore (10.69%). Just outside the top 10 you find countries like Sweden, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Finland.

When it comes to market share in different world regions, North America comes in at number one (14.09%), closely followed by Oceania/Australia (13.71%), then Europe (6.23%) as a distant third. The Mac has less than 2% market share in Asia, Africa and South America. Hey, just at those regions as potential areas for some serious Mac growth.

And Pingdom concludes its study with this timely note: "With the massive success of Apple products like the iPod, iPhone, and lately, the iPad, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Apple also sells personal computers. Apple’s Mac computers have never dominated the market in the same way, always being a distant second to Windows-based PCs, but they do sell well, and have become increasingly popular lately."

-- Dennis Sellers