Comments on: MacBook Air sales lagging?

By: Matt Sun

Matt Sun — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:48:22 +0000

I love this site. I cant believe I didn’t find it sooner.
Its been some time since the first comment here. As I look at the economy and how much it changed since the release I cant see to many people spending the money. The Macbook Airs I see for sale are over 2k. Just to much money. I cant see to many business’s getting them either. After all there just to pretty to just give to a employee. Nice toy though. If folks outside the US buy from the US they will save some cash.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:57:54 +0000

I was googling for confirmation that this is indeed the case (because I was sure it was the case) and found your post. I also found out that… I was mistaken in my belief. Apparently sales are going really well and they’re not keeping up with demand. Who’da thunk.

I don’t think it’s a long-term high seller like the MacBook, but… apparently there are enough people out there in this niche who want this thing to make it a sales hit in the short term.

By: kusol

kusol — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:05:38 +0000

Why do you want to say bad things about Apple?

By: tim

tim — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:43:20 +0000

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.

By: Robert Rindberg

Robert Rindberg — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:55:52 +0000

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?

By: Jak

Jak — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:06:43 +0000

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.

By: Yoooof

Yoooof — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:22:37 +0000

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.

By: MichaelBB

MichaelBB — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:26:06 +0000

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.

By: Omega

Omega — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:46:06 +0000

I’ll take an Asus Eee Pc over a MBA. You’re basically just getting a WiFi internet portal with it.

By: JS

JS — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:58:26 +0000

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.

By: Jabba

Jabba — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:06:09 +0000

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

By: Jack P

Jack P — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 03:49:35 +0000

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

By: James Saldaña

James Saldaña — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 03:16:07 +0000

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!

By: Mog

Mog — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 03:14:09 +0000

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.

By: Jeff B.

Jeff B. — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:07:27 +0000

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.

By: JPO

JPO — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:15:44 +0000

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.

By: NuShrike

NuShrike — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:05:51 +0000

This will be as popular as the Cube. Come on, wasn’t it so cool?

By: dondgc

dondgc — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:18:26 +0000

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?

By: Bart

Bart — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:01:06 +0000

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.

By: 2813308004

2813308004 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:46:02 +0000

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)

By: frank

frank — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:32:27 +0000

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:25:33 +0000

I think the problem with the MBAir is it’s too expensive for what you get. It should be priced way lower.

By: FMS

FMS — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:39:25 +0000

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.

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:33:43 +0000

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…

By: Daniel Torres

Daniel Torres — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:59:47 +0000

I don’t know what retail locations they surveyed but where I live they can’t keep these suckers in stock.

By: Tee Jay

Tee Jay — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:32:46 +0000

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

By: Glenn

Glenn — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:28:31 +0000

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.

By: Dtest5477

Dtest5477 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:24:18 +0000

ryang thats brilliant. I might have been one, but probably not.

Gal, thank for the troll, some might have thought you stopped posting.

Fyre, its not a fair comparison either way, the Macbook’s prices make it a bigger seller. I know alot more college students want macbooks than Airs. Either way MB or MBP its a flawed comparison for a new product.

By: LexM

LexM — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:15:33 +0000

Read carefully: “According to Piper Jaffray, 60% of retailers are seeing less demand for the MBA than they did after the introduction of the MacBook Pro.” In other words, 40% of retailers are seeing demand for the MBA that is equal to or greater than demand for the MBP upon its introduction.

How, exactly, does this support the conclusion that MBA sales are poor? Answer: It doesn’t. Only if MBA sales were expected to be the same as or higher than MBP sales (at 100% of Mac retailers) could that be evidence for the proposition that MBA sales are poor.

Who, exactly, expected MBA sales to be the same as or higher than MBP sales? Answer: Not the major Mac magazines and commentators, all of whom identified MBA as niche product.

Conclusion: This report is intended less to inform or enlighten and more to generate unthinking woe-is-Apple commentary. Judging by the comments here (see, for example, Galvatroll), it seems to have succeeded. Who knew Piper Jaffray aspired to be Paul Thurrott?

By: Hackworth

Hackworth — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:13:41 +0000

Yep, Apple goofed. The people that will need this product will absolutely love it to death. The problem is: they are only a small fraction of the laptop users. Most laptop users would have preferred that Apple had spent it’s time making the MacBook Pro a couple of mills thinner, several ounces lighter but, people want all the ports and the optical drive –they want choices and as much power as you can cram into the laptop. They will not sacrifice ports or drives for a few ounces or a few mills thinner. Given the power of laptops, people understand and can lived with the fact that there is a lower limit (now) for weight and size. The air will go the way of the cube.