“Interest in the lightweight MacBook Air is high, but sales are modest, according to a survey of Apple resellers conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt blogs for Fortune.
MacDailyNews Note: As any sane observer would surmise, survey or not. Of course everyone wants to see the world’s thinnest notebook and, naturally, some subset of those will have a use for it. The MacBook Pro and MacBook product lines continue to be offered despite the debut of the MacBook Air for those not covered by the MBA’s feature set.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “‘Customers are more curious but less willing to buy the MacBook Air than they were the original MacBook,’ Munster writes in a report to clients issued this morning. ‘We believe that 16% of Macs by the end of calendar year 2008 will be MacBook Air.'”
MacDailyNews Take: 16% of all Macs! That oughta knock the “foment” right off the lips of the MacBook Air naysayers.
MacDailyNews Note: As per MacDailyNews Reader “Spark” below, in the first calendar quarter of 2007 (Apple’s fiscal Q2 07), Apple sold 1.517 million Macs. In the second calendar quarter, Apple sold 1.764 million Macs. Apple sold 2.164 million and 2.319 million Macs in the third and fourth calendar quarters, respectively. That’s a total of 7.764 million Macs in 2007. 16% of which would be 1,242,240 MacBook Air units (an average of 310,560 per quarter).
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “Munster and his team spoke to 20 Apple specialists on Monday. The impression they got was that MacBook Air sales are coming over and above the MacBook’s, and not cannibalizing Apple’s most popular model.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Paul Venezia just wrote for InfoWorld, “If you’re looking for a desktop replacement system, get a MacBook Pro. If you’re looking for a basic laptop, get a MacBook. If you’re looking for supreme portability and more than reasonable performance, definitely get a MacBook Air.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Patrice” for the heads up.]