14 DAY TRIAL // There have been rumors in recent days about the sales of the new Apple computers and laptops, rumors which pointed towards slow sales of the new models. Rumors however are just that, and it seems that Apple is seeing strong sales of the iMac Core Duo and MacBook Pro, according to research and investment firm American Technology Research.
In a research note sent to clients on Wednesday morning, analyst Shaw Wu said that the new Intel Macs are selling well, probably because many people were waiting until the new models came out before they bought. Areas in which the sales were particularly strong were the education (K-12 and higher education), content creation, and consumer end markets. On the subject of the MacBook Pro, the analyst noted that Apple is not expected to ramp production until early February. "We believe Apple is having some difficulty building enough to meet demand, but we are not too concerned as we believe this is a good problem to have instead of building too many for no demand," Wu wrote.
Sales of the older models seem to be lagging behind, however. "We believe this may be due in part to Apple's marketing message that Intel is much better than PowerPC, and so far price points are comparable with no discounts offered," the analyst added. "We do not anticipate this to last that long as inventories of PowerPC Macs appear fairly lean at around 3-4 weeks, which is likely the primary reason why Apple hasn't offered discounts. Selling two processor families and marketing one as superior to another adds to customer confusion and isn't a sound long-term strategy, in our opinion," Wu wrote.
But to get an idea of how badly Apple sales are doing, one needs just to take a look at Amazon.com's "Top Sellers" list, where of the top ten products 8 are Apple computers, places 2 and 3 being taken by the Core Duo iMacs, while 4 and 5 are taken by the MacBook Pro models.