MacBook Air sales lagging?
It looks like the MacBook Air might have a long, hard road ahead. Apple’s diminutive notebook has been met with more public resistance than most of the company’s recent introductions. Consumers and critics alike have seemed wary to adopt the new computer due to the compromises its small stature demands. Apple clearly knew that they were taking a gamble, but seemed to think that the lack of an optical drive, fewer external port connectors, and a sealed battery bay would be overshadowed by the sheer thinness of the thing. It looks like they may have been wrong. According to Piper Jaffray, 60% of retailers are seeing less demand for the MBA than they did after the introduction of the MacBook Pro. According to the same survey, this lack of interest should be partly responsible for a 18% drop in Apple sales over last quarter’s numbers, though the holiday season certainly gave the latter a bit of a boost. Nonetheless, Apple has some serious work ahead if it hopes to make the MacBook Air as successful as it would like.
Please note: we’re only reporting on Piper Jaffray’s findings. We haven’t had a chance to independently check this out with some of our sources, but from what we briefly heard, MacBook Airs are selling tremendously well. Go figure!
I have Gene Munster’s report in front of me. This blog entry is factually incorrect in the way it attempts to summarize it.
The Macbook (which is Gene’s yardstick model) is a mass market product, the MBAir is not, by design. He sees no cannibalization of the existing product line so MBAir sales are additive. And he sees the sales running just shy of 18% total macs.
Sounds like a pretty big success…and Munster agrees by restated his $200plus price target. If you are going to use someone else’s research in a blog the least you can do is not hack it up.
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You know for a second I thought Galvatron was not going to show up. Then I remember that he is a microsoft computer with a defective copy of word installed on him, and it was beyond his control to not comment on anything related to Apple
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I don’t know what retail locations they surveyed but where I live they can’t keep these suckers in stock.
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Munster’s expected 18% of Mac sales seems to align with another source indicating 400k MBA builds this quarter. With Apple doing about 2M Macs/quarter, 18% equates to 360K…
I too feel that the vast majority of these sales are not negatively impacting other Mac sales; so are for the most part additive. Throw-in the increased margins of this product, and I don’t see it as a bust at all…
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My husband looked at the Air and found it exceedingly lacking. Thin is nice, but the year-old Sony VAIO he already has is quite a bit lighter than the Air, has more ports, and built-in Sprint digital networking capabilities. He was willing to overlook the weight difference if the Air had decent capabilities, but when it had so little to offer, it wasn’t interesting. And the other Apple laptops with more interesting capabilities weigh a ton.
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I think the problem with the MBAir is it’s too expensive for what you get. It should be priced way lower.
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It’s probably a great computer for about 1% of the population. Apple chose to ignore the 20% of people that want a 12/13-inch MBP.
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I’m not going to go into much depth on this, but I’m using an MBA with the SSD, and it is by far the best laptop I’ve ever owned (over countless Vaio’s, and an MBP)
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There’s so many reasons why the comparison of their releases is unfair. The Mac Book Pro came out when people have been holding off on buying Apple products for months waiting for Intel releases. That was a huge flood, especially since the Mac Book Pro was the first Intel laptop, while nobody knew anything about the Air until it came out. Few people held back on any purchases because of it. This alone, not to mention the fact that the Air is such a niche product while the Mac Book Pro is meant for a much larger number of users, makes me think Piper Jaffray isn’t very credible. Even though they’re both laptops, they’re really comparing apples to oranges.
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What a silly post. Of course there is “less demand” for a laptop aimed at a special subset of the laptop buying universe.
Surely it doesn’t take a genius - boy or otherwise - to understand that MBAs will never sell as many units as MBPs.
It does make we wonder about Piper Jaffray - these guys are supposed to be experts?
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This will be as popular as the Cube. Come on, wasn’t it so cool?
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I don’t know. It’s ranked #10 on Amazon for laptops. And #1 on Apple’s website. Seems to be selling well on those sites.
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Somehow this does not surprise me, from the XPS M1330 to the Lenovo X300 that all offer the same size with real specs. So if this is the way it stays then that won’t be much of a surprise.
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What LexM said. The MacBook Air is much more of a niche product then the MacBook or MacBook Pro - that’s not a bad thing, because I think it’s a niche that Apple needed to fill, but it is what it is. The fact that nearly half of all retailers retailers are seeing *more* demand for the MBA than they did for the MBP shows a surprisingly *high* amount of interest - or at least how far Apple has come since they introduced the MBP in 2006.
To say that MacBook Air sales are “lagging” because it’s not outselling much more mass-market notebooks is ridiculous. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the MBA is the computer that takes subnotebooks to the mass market.
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Think again…
“60% of retailers are seeing less demand for the MBA than they did after the introduction of the MacBook Pro”
The market for an ultra light laptop with never be anywhere near a full size laptop, so 40% of MacBook Pro sales sounds very solid. Ultra light laptops are a niche market.
“According to the same survey, this lack of interest should be partly responsible for a 18% drop in Apple sales over last quarter’s numbers,”
Impossible. How can a product that wasn’t even for sale last quarter be responsible for a drop in sales? Also, which (last) quarter are we talking about? If were talking 4th quarter 2007, 4th quarter is Xmas and the following 1st quarter will always have a drop in sales for obvious reason. If we are talking 1st quarter 2007, then that’s possible.
But the most obvious reason for any drop in sales, only if it’s year-over-year is “it’s the economy stupid!”
I call FUD!
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Why post remarks that other people have written?
That is lazy and irresponsible.
Find another line of work that won’t tax you!
Jack Plasky
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I wanted one until I saw that it is an executive/fashion accessory; slow, frankenstein’d together in time for Jobs’ presentation, far too costly, an iPod drive, an iPhone pad, rushed processors that will soon be succeeded, SSD too small, and the battery issue is a travel problem & a tweak-trick issue as I sometimes have to reboot, replug, and reposition battery to try to fix problems. Like the cube and initial appleTV, the mark was missed on this one. Will wait for price drop, upgraded speed & SSD, if ever. Leaning toward MBP and forgetting MBA
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You’ll need to point me towards the reviewers that didn’t like the MBA, or thought it was too much of a compromise. I’ve just been going on the OVERWHELMINGLY positive reviews I’ve read so far.
Honestly, are you too lazy to actually WRITE a story, putting the information in context? “We’re just reporting” is basically the difference between the New York Post and the Economist: “just reporting” vs. REAL reporting.
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I’ll take an Asus Eee Pc over a MBA. You’re basically just getting a WiFi internet portal with it.
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Went to the store and played with this and its light and all that but the price tag, and only 80 gig hd has allot of people saying no and going with the macbook or mbp’s. While I was in the store I saw more macbooks go out the door than any other computer they sell, and the age group was anywhere from 18 to 55. With everyone waiting for the new MBP to come out with the LED screens its kind of a bad time for the Air, also heard allot of couples saying Taxes are due.
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I bought a MBA because I am on the road all the time. I have a Macbook Pro already that I use for business AND personal use (Photoshop, etc) but the MBA is great for the traveler and worth it. Think about it - all of the whiners about this machine just don’t get it. How may peripherals do you have plugged into your laptop at any one time? One, maybe??? And if you going to use high end stuff like Photoshop, the MBA is not for this. It IS a niche notebook, generally for the road warrior that already has another laptop or wants portability.
I splurged on this because it was so light and perfect to carry around, and I have news for all of you - once you try it you’ll forget about the price. It’s worth every penny. Remote disc works great (I bought the $99 superdrive but I don’t need it). Time machine backups are made to a large ext drive at home connected to my MBP - wirelessly with no problems. And I have the ethernet dongle as well - but I never have had the need to use it yet! And is this laptop powerful enough? ABSOLUTELY. Forget about the 1.6 gHz and the 4200rpm HDD - it works great.
Apple did not release this thing to sell like the MB and MBP. I think they knew darn well what the expectations are for this. So forget about the naysayers and the ANALysts’ claims. The MBA will do fine. Worst case they drop the price a bit and there will be more buyers.
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hmmmm ya, the MBA looked like a huge risk. I sure as hell don’t want one, the specs are of a computer from 2002. I like my MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz better.
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James Quinn : did you make it out of third grade ? Between apostrophes in the wrong places and mispellings, your post is just about unreadable.
Another fine product of the educational system?
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why would apple want to sell to such a narrow market? It seems absurd that a company would focus on such a narrow market and people using that as an excuse why apple didn’t include things like an optical drive. The MBA doesn’t seem to fill or bridge a gap as I would think a new product should. Look at most ultraportables now, they all have optical drives. Why? Because the ultraportables that didn’t include them, and used external drives like the Air, didn’t sell well. People hate having to carry extra crap that isn’t solidly afixed to the laptop. Why buy an ultraportable then if you have to have all those extra attachments that not only increase the weight you are carrying but requires lots of footprint? remember 6 pounds of stuff is the same as 1×6 pound laptop. MBA is definitely not for me.
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Why do you want to say bad things about Apple?
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