14 DAY TRIAL // Checks with Asian Apple partners have indicated to Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that Cupertino has sold roughly 1.1 million MacBook Air units, which should account for some 40 per cent of the total number of Apple notebooks sold during the fourth quarter of 2010.
Talking to AppleInsider, Kuo reportedly said that his most recent checks with Asian suppliers make it credible that Apple has shipped some 1.1 million MacBook Air units during the three-month period ending December 2010.
The analyst took into account both 11-inch and 13-inch configurations of the MacBook Air. This should mark one of Apple’s most successful Mac product launches, the report says.
Kuo initially estimated that Apple’s new-generation MacBook Airs would sell around 700,000 units.
According to his recent findings, he underestimated the consumers’ appeal of the MacBook Air by almost half a million units (400,000). That’s 63% higher than Kuo’s previous estimates, the report informs.
The 1.1 million figure also means that 40% of the 2.9 million notebook systems Apple said it had shipped in Q4 are MacBook Airs.
Put into perspective, MacBook Air sales in Apple’s Q4 2010 accounted for over a quarter of its entire Mac business.
Launched in October 2010 during Apple’s Back to the Mac event, the new MacBook Airs feature solid state drives (SSD) for storage, Intel Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, and between 5 and 7 hours of wireless productivity, depending on the model of choice.
The systems are significantly cheaper than the original MacBook Air, which constituted a key factor to drive all the sales reported by Kuo.
For example, the base 11-inch model with 64GB of on-board storage, a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics goes for $999 - as much (or as low) as Apple’s much heftier 13-inch White MacBook.