The Merrill Lynch company has declared in a report published a few days ago that it expects Apple to ensure a four percent market share in the United States for the computer systems.

The company is relying on the Tiger operating system, which was recently launched in a new improved version.
Merrill Lynch predicts that by the end of the year, Mac OS X will run on 10 million systems from the United States. According to information provided by Gartner, at the end of 2005, Mac OS will run on 2.4% of the active computing systems.

Another explanation for the optimistic previsions may be the world wide boost of the iPod players.

The Mac Mini and the new price policy for the Apple systems, so often criticized for their prohibitive prices, will surely lead to a new increase of Apple's popularity in the domain of individual computing systems.

Currently, on the notebook market, Apple has 3.4% and on the desktop market only 1.7%.

Apple hopes to convert Windows users by offering them lower prices and the stability and security of the Tiger system, intensively promoted by the company.

Merrill Lynch estimates that in the first quarter, Tiger sales will generate incomes of 84-100 million USD, an important increase compared to the 60 million USD generated by the Panther system.