NPD Group said Thursday that sales of Snow Leopard Mac OS X so far have exceeded Apple’s two previous Mac OS X releases during their first two weeks. According to the market researcher, Snow Leopard unit shipments were more than twice the volume of Leopard’s initial sales and almost four times higher than Apple’s earlier Tiger Mac OS X release.
Moreover, Snow Leopard’s sales only declined about 25 percent from the first week to the second, said NPD Vice President Stephen Baker. In comparison, volume shipments of Leopard and Tiger declined more than 60 percent in the second week, he added.
“With pricing reduced by more than $100 for both the single-user and five-user pack versus Leopard pricing, Apple has clearly demonstrated that aggressive pricing policies in this economic environment generate an outstanding consumer response,” Baker said.
Minor Financial Impact
Still, Snow Leopard’s strong initial performance is unlikely to have much of an impact on Apple’s bottom line in the current third quarter, according to Piper Jaffray, which is maintaining an “overweight” rating and $186 price target for Apple’s stock.
“According to NPD data, Snow Leopard has outsold Leopard two to one, but since it is one-fourth the price, it is half the revenue event that Leopard was,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Andrew Murphy. “It should still provide a slight tailwind to margins in the quarter, but in the end it’s still a relatively minor product for Apple with a minor financial impact on the business.”
Piper Jaffray also has analyzed NPD’s retail data for domestic Mac sales during the first two months of the third quarter. The numbers show a seven percent rise in Mac sales, which led the firm’s analysts to project unit shipments of 2.75 million to 2.8 million versus a Street consensus of about 2.75 million for the current quarter….