Jobs Leopard leaps out of the cage, but will Mac sales follow?

Will Leopard have legs?

Apple saw booming sales of the latest version of its operating system over the weekend, which may help boost momentum for the company's line of Mac computers during the holiday season.

Analyst Keith Bachman, of BMO Capital Markets, estimated that 200,000 of those 2 million sales included Macs that were pre-installed with Leopard. And coming off a quarter in which Apple sold 2.16 million Macs running the previous operating system called Tiger, the question facing Apple is whether Leopard will be a force in adding to Mac sales during the end-of-the-year holiday shopping season.

"Consumers typically don't understand or know why they should care about an operating system," said J.P. Gownder, principal analyst with Forrester Research. "But in the Apple ecosystem, there are lots of evangelists that play a large role in proselytizing for Apple."

Apple has a tough act to follow regarding Mac sales. In addition to Apple just coming off its first quarter of more than 2 million Mac sales, technology research firm Gartner Inc. said Apple claimed about 8% of the U.S. PC market during the third quarter of the year.

Most analysts expect Mac sales to weaken slightly in the December quarter, as sales have historically been stronger during the back-to-school season. Apple shipped 1.6 million Macs during the final quarter of 2006.

Still, Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray, said that the numbers illustrate the strong loyalty to the Mac and Apple's ability to sell frequent operating system upgrades to a greater share of its Mac customer base.

"These numbers show the Mac user base is growing," Munster said, in a research note. "It also shows that it is an unusually active user base." Munster has an outperform rating and $250 a share target on Apple's stock.

Bachman, of BMO Capital Markets, called the first weekend of Leopard's sales "impressive" and said his estimates for 2.15 million Mac sales for the quarter will likely turn out to be lower than Apple's final results.

In a research note, Bachman said Mac sales "will be in a barbell distribution this quarter, [with] lots of sales at the beginning with Leopard's release, and at the end of the quarter with holidays."

.http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/apples-leopard-leaps-mac-sales/
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