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Filed under: Retail, Software, Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard selling faster than Leopard

by Mel Martin (RSS feed) on Sep 17th, 2009

They aren't flying off the shelves, but early signs are that Snow Leopard boxes are far exceeding sales of Leopard, and 4 times higher than sales of Tiger.

That's the assessment of the NPD group, which tracks retail sales for many industries. The firm also notes that sales declined about 25% from week 1 to week 2, again, far better than both Leopard and Tiger. Tiger was released in April of 2005 and Leopard hit the streets in October of 2007.

Of course, Snow Leopard sells for US$100.00 lower than the price of previous versions of Mac OS X, so that could be a large part of the success of the release.

Stephen Baker of NPD noted, "As we head into the fall selling season, and the release of another major OS upgrade, it will be instructive to see if that upgrade (Windows 7) -- currently projected to sell at ASPs much higher than Snow Leopard -- can deliver the same incremental increase in consumer demand that Snow Leopard has enjoyed."

As we've noted, the update to Snow Leopard has been a bit bumpy for some, but by most measures of satisfaction and sales Snow Leopard is not at all like the mammal it has been named after -- which is, sadly, endangered and diminishing in numbers.


Tags: NPD Group, retail sales, Snow Leopard, SnowLeopard

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Portables

Stephen Baker: Drop the MacBook below $800

by Megan Lavey (RSS feed) on Mar 11th, 2009

Stephen Baker, Vice President of Industry Analysis for The NPD Group, released his analysis of Apple's sales trends following the recent release of January sales figures. In his opinion? If Apple keeps up its current pricing strategy, it's going to flounder in today's economy. The solution? If Apple can't produce a netbook, then slash the price of the MacBook down to $799 in order to bring a mainstream price to a high-end product.

How low can you go? Discussion on this article behind the scenes here at TUAW resulted in the observation that if you drop the price too much, you'll wind up diluting the brand itself. Apple commands higher prices, but it also has the product to back it up -- and it has made some price concessions. You can pay $999 now for a better MacBook than I paid $1399 for just 15 months ago, and one that will last much longer than most PC notebooks on the market. Drop the price too much and not only will the brand get diluted, it'll spark even more fears that something is wrong with the company. There's a fine line between premium and cheap, and a lot of that is psychological.

Personally, I would also think less of Apple if it jumped on the netbook bandwagon just because everyone else did. It didn't even venture into the smartphone market until it could develop a device that not only blew away the competition, but changed the cell phone industry itself. If Apple is going to produce a netbook, then let it produce one that'll stand out and won't get lost among the Acers, Dells and eeePCs out there. But, don't slash MacBook prices to compensate for the lack of one either.

What are your thoughts on Baker's observations? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: macbook, netbook, npd group, npd-group, NpdGroup

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Retail

Apple's US market share still falling and rising with the tides

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Oct 19th, 2006

Yesterday's prelim 4th quarter report was great news for Apple's health as a manufacturer of personal computers - they shipped over 1.6 million Macs, the most ever in a quarter and 30% more than the previous quarter. Today's news of a rise to 6.1 percent market share in the U.S. from Gartner, however, has the Mac web doing the market share dance all over again, as just a year ago this month it was the NPD Group reporting that Apple's U.S. market share - excluding online sales - had risen to 6.6 percent. The confusion ensues when considering MacNN's conflicting report from Gartner claiming Apple's U.S. share just rose to 6.1 percent. Of course where and how these different groups are getting their numbers is unbeknownst to this blogger, but methinks something might have been lost in translation between all these analysts.

Still, while market share numbers might be getting a little fuzzy as of late, we can at least trust Apple's announcement of selling the most.Macs.evar in a quarter, and that's alright with me.

Tags: analyst, analysts, computers, gartner, hardware, mac, macnn, macs, market share, MarketShare, npd group, NpdGroup, percent, percentage, united states, UnitedStates, us

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