Orders now up to 1 million per month

Apple shipped approximately 7 million MacBooks of various kinds during 2009, according to sources in the electronics manufacturing industry. Most orders are said to have been handled by Quanta, with others going to Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry. Quanta's orders alone are thought to have ranged between 300,000 and 400,000 units a month during the first half of the year, accelerating up to a million by the fourth quarter.

The number would appear to back analyst estimates that as many as 3.3 million Macs may have been sold in the December quarter, when combining desktop and notebook figures. Sources expect that Apple will again order a million MacBooks from Quanta in January, in spite of typically slow post-holiday sales. The cause is the Lunar New Year, a February holiday in countries like Taiwan that may force Apple to stockpile.

by MacNN Staff