Net Applications' monthly Market Share reports deliver some interesting information about the operating systems people are using to browse the web.

You can argue whether the exact methodology employed means the numbers can be considered 'the truth', but the changes from month to month clearly provide some insight.

Over the last 12 months, Windows' web share as reported by Net Applications has dropped 1.83 percentage points to 90.66 percent.

Most of that has gone to the Mac, which has picked up 1.28 percentage points to 7.86 percent. But the bulk of that change occurred between October and December last year. Things have been a bit up and down this calendar year.

Given the relatively small number of devices sold, the iPhone is arguably the standout. It's the number four operating system behind the three primarily desktop OSes, and outstrips all the remaining platforms.

The arrival of the iPhone 3G with the accompanying official sales in a larger number of countries pushed up the stats, with the iPhone share leaping from 0.19 percent in July to 0.30 percent in August.

So in round numbers, Windows has ten times the web share of Apple; Apple has ten times the web share of Linux; and there's nothing else worth worrying about unless you particularly want to cater for PlayStation and Wii users when they're not playing games.

It'll be interesting to see how Apple's web share changes over the remainder of 2008 as the iPhone installed base ramps up with the release of the handset in more and more countries.

Another interesting point will be whether or not Google's Chrome browser (currently in beta for Windows only) makes a showing in the browser share report.