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Apple had a share of 2.5% in the US in December, and is actually predicted to lose share in Feb and March, due to sharp increases in sales of Windows PC's running Vista:

That statement is false. The 2.5% figure is worldwide sales, not US sales and that does not represent installed base.

Apple's 4th quarter 2006 market share in the US was 6.1% (Gartner) or 5.8% (IDG which includes servers). In the worldwide share topped 3% in January 2007. Webapplications.com shows that in February web usage on worldwide websites that are heavily PC weighted was 6.38%.

He has no basis upon which to make that assertion apart from yet another boast from Steve Jobs, that is neither backed by IDC or Dataquest, the two recognized authorities on measuring market share for desktop and server computers.

Steve Jobs "boast" is backed up by the sales figures reported to the FTC in their annual and quarterly reports which are a little more accurate than the guesstimates made by analysts. Apple's report for its 2006 Fiscal Year said "For the fiscal year, Apple sold 5.3 million Macs." Jobs cited the "over 19,000,000 OS X Macs" at the WWDC conference which took place in early August, after their 3rd quarter ended. The figure is accurate as of that quarter. It does not include the 4th quarter's 1,610,000 Macs nor the 1st Quarter 2007, 1,608,000 Macs as reported in their 10Q's. That would bring the total number of Macs to 22,218,000 OS X Macs at a minimum.

It is further stated, and backed up by industry surveys, that 1/2 of all new Macs are sold to either switchers or first time computer buyers. So, using the 1,608,000 Macs sold in the quarter ending December 31, that translates into 17,867 Macs sold every day (90 shopping days, Thanksgiving and Christmas don't count)... and 1/2 of that figure is pretty damn close to 9,000.

60.1% of the Macs sold that quarter were sold in the United States. That makes "Most of those 9,000 new Mac users per day are in the United States..." a true statement.

"The 2.5% figure is worldwide sales, not US sales and that does not represent installed base"

If the 2.5% represents worldwide sales, that's even better for Microsoft, given that, worldwide sales are far bigger than US sales.
But the 2.5% figure from that article DO represent US sales.

"Webapplications.com shows that in February web usage on worldwide websites that are heavily PC weighted was 6.38%"

Webapplications represent nothing.
They don't represent PC or Mac sales. They merely represent PC or Mac users in the limited sites they monitor, and their figures have always been very different, and much more skewed aginst Microsoft than figures from the much better known and more reliable Websidestory.
Even Apple themselves, in their most recently reported sales figures, said they had sold just 1.6 million machines in the last three months of 2006, virtually the same number it sold in the previous three months, yet Webappications is reporting market share increase for Macs. So where are the extra mac users from?
There was no sales increase.

"Steve Jobs "boast" is backed up by the sales figures reported to the FTC in their annual and quarterly reports which are a little more accurate than the guesstimates made by analysts"

Apple sold virtually the same number of Macs in the 4th quarter as they sold in the quarter before that.
The FTC is not a PC/Mac measuring outfit. Jobs boast is simply an empty boast.
If PC users had been switching at the rate of "9000" per day, that would make 3.24 million switchers per year, and Apple would not be having a measly 2.6 % share of PC sales worldwide in December.
We have been hearing this talk of "Apple has been gaining market share" for over 15 year from the apple fanboys, and Mac shares are still a very tiny 2.5% worldwide today.
Where is all the "increase in market share" at when it comes to real sales?