News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

October 30, 2007

business

Two million march to Leopard

Posted Oct. 30, ’07, 8:19 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Business

Leopard salesWe’ve deluged you with the features, tweaks, and shininess of Apple’s latest big cat, but when it comes to business, people want to know how Leopard is faring in sales. According to a press release, er, released by Apple this morning, the answer to that is “Frickin’ sweet.”

Apple® today announced that it sold (or delivered in the case of maintenance agreements) over two million copies of Mac OS® X Leopard since its release on Friday, far outpacing the first-weekend sales of Mac OS X Tiger, which was previously the most successful OS release in Apple’s history.
Well, lah-dee-dah. The obvious question is: how does it compare to Microsoft’s release of Vista earlier this year?

At the risk of putting Apples up against oranges, the only sales figures I could find were for Vista’s first month of sales, in which it shipped 20 million units, or an average of an (auspicious) 666,666 units per day—creepy. It seems unlikely that Leopard sales will surpass that; they’d have to accelerate tremendously, or even maintain the rate of sale for opening weekend, both unlikely eventualities. But that shouldn’t detract from what are pretty solid numbers.

And far more to the point, Leopard beat the stuffing out of Tiger, which took more than month to hit the two million mark. Anyone arguing that the Mac’s marketshare hasn’t grown in the last two and a half years ought to look closely at those numbers.


3 Comments

krye said:

I don't think you can call Vista a better success because it shipped 20 million units. Remember, MS has 90% of the market. I think it is better to ask how many Windows users upgraded to Vista vs how many Mac users upgraded to Leopard. I'm sure you'll quickly see where people's loyalties are.

October 30, 2007 8:56 AM
Anonymous said:

also, about the 20 million.. those numbers are actually FLAWED, because microsoft is accounting for every computer and PC built in that month that has vista pre-installed... in fact.. most of those computers they "accounted" for, are not even sold to a person.. they are on a shelf. but because they are "pre-installed" with vista, they apparently count as 1 of 20,000,000 users. Its another numbers game M$ likes to pull to make their less than stellar sales and upgrade's on vista look stellar.

October 30, 2007 10:14 AM
Jared said:

Actually if you break down the figure.

Leopard was on sale for 2 days or 2.16 days (If you take into account Friday night)

Vista sold 20 Million (apparently) in one month. 20 Million divided by 30 days is, like they said 666,666 per day. Times that by 2.16 and you get 1,239,999 (approx) over the first weekend. More than 3 times as many.

While Leopard wont get 20 million in the first month. The first weekend results kicked it's aero glass butt.

Microsoft takes another blow to it's bloated head.

October 31, 2007 12:54 AM

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