Apple Mac Shipments to Hit 10 million Mark in 2006?

"Apple Computer is expected to ship a total of 10 million desktop PCs and notebooks in 2006, with its major contract makers Foxconn Electronics, Quanta Computer and Asustek Computer to benefit, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) cited Taiwan PC manufacturers as saying," Jessie Shen reports for DigiTimes. "As reported on January 2005, Foxconn manufactures Apple's Mac mini computers, Quanta holds orders for the PowerBook series and Asustek has orders for Apple's iBook models. The EDN report further noted that Quanta also manufactures Apple's upcoming MacBook Pro, which supports a 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor."

The large 10 million figure, may sound unrealistic, especially when looked at in the light of Apple's 2005 sales which totaled 4.742 million Macs... that's more than double. However, who would have expected, in February 2005, that Apple would sell 14 million iPods in the Christmas quarter? The doubling might seem like all to wishful thinking, but there is still a long way to go, and this year, Apple is sure to surprise everyone, seeing as how on the 1st of April, the company celebrates 30 years. It is very unlikely that a company such as Apple would miss out on the event and not come out with something big.

Furthermore, there is something here that does not add up. Jobs said that all Macs would have made the transition to Intel by the end of the year. This report mentions the iBook, MacBook Pro, Mini and iMac, but what of the Intel based PowerMacs? The fact that Apple is considering a doubling of the number of Macs sold is promising to say the least. After all, there are still many Macs that will be popping up soon, one year from now, we might very well be thinking that Apple just managed to meet demands.