Bing’s Share Gains Driven by its OEM Relationships

It appears that Bing’s share gains could be largely due to its OEM distribution relationships with HP, Dell, and Lenovo, rather than users making a conscious decision to shift from Yahoo, Google, and other search engines. Combined, the above three computer manufacturers have more than 50% market share in the U.S. and PC sales have been increasing over the past few months. As PC sales increase, due in part to Windows 7, then Bing’s share should also increase.

A quick look at Microsoft’s share of toolbar searches verifies this: Microsoft’s April 09 toolbar search market share was 2.4%, according to comScore, while in October 09, it more than doubled to 5.5%. Overall industry toolbar searches have remained steady as a percent of total searches. At the same time, Microsoft’s domestic search share increased from 8.2% in April to 9.9% in October. There you have it.