Snow Leopard selling twice as fast as snow-less Leopard

Posted on 18 Sep 2009 at 10:16

Snow Leopard has been a huge success for Apple, far outselling previous OS X upgrades.

Mac OS X 10.6 was released at the end of August and in the following fortnight Apple sold twice as many copies as it had for 10.5 Leopard and almost four times as many copies as 10.4 Tiger.

The figures from research firm NPD’s retail tracking service, which counts sales at both online and brick-and-mortar shops, show that Apple made the right decision to price the upgrade at just £25.

“Apple has clearly demonstrated that aggressive pricing policies in this economic environment generate an outstanding consumer response,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD.

“Even though some considered Snow Leopard to be less feature-focused than the releases of Leopard or Tiger, the ease of upgrading to Snow Leopard and the affordable pricing made it a win-win for Apple computer owners—thus helping to push sales to record numbers.”

Baker added that it will be interesting to contrast take-up of Snow Leopard’s with the reception for Windows 7.

“As we head into the fall selling season, and the release of another major OS upgrade, it will be instructive to see if that upgrade—currently projected to sell at ASPs much higher than Snow Leopard—can deliver the same incremental increase in consumer demand that Snow Leopard has enjoyed.”

Author: Simon Aughton

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