Analyst: Leopard to generate $240M in Q4
updated 04:55 pm EDT, Mon October 8, 2007
Leopard to make $240M?
The impending release of Mac OS X Leopard could prove to be financially lucrative, says an analyst with the market research firm Piper Jaffray. Gene Munster notes that Leopard is being released at the end of the first month of a financial quarter, like the previous version of Mac OS X, Tiger; Leopard however will benefit from a much greater Mac OS X installed base, consisting of 23 million users versus 12 million. Since Tiger accrued $125 million in its launch quarter, with a 15 percent uptake in the space of just six weeks, Munster estimates that Leopard will add $240 million to Apple's Q4 2007. Looking forward to January's Macworld expo, Munster also predicts that Apple will release one of two products: a rumored touchscreen PDA somewhat larger than an iPhone, or a possible subnotebook.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2005
Questionable
As glitzy as the upgrades seem to be, they aren't all that beneficial to most ppl. Who has a couple hundred extra GB just sitting around to back up to? As nice as stacks are, anyone who has been seriously using OSX for more than a few months knows something about organization. Quicklook will just drag down system performance when you're arrowing up and down files in column view...
All and all, most of the new features tend towards the wow factor, but don't offer much additional usefulness in terms of user capabilities. It does a lot for the mousersizing enthusiast, but for those who've mastered the key commands to get as much work done as quickly as possible, there just not much.
Certainly burgeoning sales will number Leopard sales hide, but for ppl with older machines, limited budget, or lacking mass storage space, I don't see much pull with the new OS. Best of luck, Apple. It still blows vista out of the water. Of course, Tiger already does that.