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Apple Sells Two Million Copies of Mac OS X Leopard in First Weekend

Oct. 30, 2007 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Apple PR:

Apple today announced that it sold (or delivered in the case of maintenance agreements) over two million copies of Mac OS X Leopard since its release on Friday, far outpacing the first-weekend sales of Mac OS X Tiger, which was previously the most successful OS release in Apple’s history. Sales included copies sold at Apple’s retail stores, Apple Authorized Resellers, the online Apple Store, under maintenance agreements and bundled with new Mac computers.

I'm surprised they don't count copies downloaded via Bit Torrent in that total; they've pretty much counted everything else. Still, good numbers, and probably about 40-50 percent of what the overall retail sales will look like for the life of the system.

Discuss this Article 9

jaw04005
on Oct 30, 2007
Not to downplay Apple's success, but on a percentage basis Leopard's launch will ultimately enjoy about the same success as Tiger by the end of the month. ArsTechnica reports that there were roughly 22 million Mac users worldwide as of March 2007 (end of Q1). Apple sold roughly 1 million in Q2, 1.7 million in Q3, 2 million in Q4. Therefore, let's say there are currently roughly 26 million Mac users worldwide. Leopard first weekend sales totaled 2 million. Therefore, 7.6 percent of Mac owners are currently Leopard users. In early 2006, Apple reported that they have roughly 15 million Mac OS X users worldwide. Therefore, let's assume at Tiger's launch (April 05) there were roughly 13 million Mac users worldwide. So, 2 million in one month for Tiger, or around 15 percent total base by the end of Tiger's launch month. I'm also going to assume that Leopard maintains 1/3 of it's launch pace per weekend, so 667,000 copies each additional weekend (this is very generous)—4 million total copies sold by the end of its launch month. Therefore, around 15 percent total base by the end of Leopard's launch month.
daveinla
on Oct 30, 2007
Now that's the kind of calculation Paul would be proud of and likes to do ! Interesting numbers, thanks for your input jaw !
weedmonk
on Oct 30, 2007
Yawn...
bugfaceuk
on Oct 30, 2007
I tend to agree with the thrust of the thread, the reality is whether or not it's the end of first month sales, or the end-of-life sales, the success of Leopard in terms of sheer numbers is gated by the success of the Mac.
DRWAM
on Oct 30, 2007
Thanks Jaw, cause I was wondering waht the volue or % would be as estimated. I have never had any friends upgrade the stock OS on a Mac, and only purchased an upgrad once myself, from OS 8.5 to 9.0 [but did install the free teachers Jaguar CD that my brother the teacher gave me since he did not use it, that I installed since no one was writing much stuff for pre-OS X]. The incremental upgrades do not seem woth it to me.
jaw04005
on Oct 30, 2007
I'm going to take this a bit further. Assuming 13 million Mac users worldwide during Tiger's launch with sales of 2 million at the end of the launch month, one could figure that roughly 50 percent (or 1 million) of Tiger's sales occurred during the first weekend. This was followed by roughly 333,000 copies each additional weekend during the launch month. Therefore, during Tiger's first weekend it also garnered 7.6 percent of Apple's install base. As of now, Leopard is enjoying roughly the same success as Tiger did at launch. So, once again where is the story?
jaw04005
on Oct 30, 2007
You have to give props to Apple. Microsoft would have loved to have moved 15 percent of its install base to Windows Vista at the end of its launch month. However, Leopard is not going to be taking over the world anytime soon. In actuality, it's going to have move many more millions of units to enjoy the same success (and install base) of 10.4 Tiger. It will get there for sure, but it's going to take time.
cesjr
on Oct 30, 2007
40-50 percent of total sales over the life of Panther? What? Apple is moving 2 million plus macs a quarter. That's 8 million a year. Assuming an 18 month cycle to the next paid OS X update, that's 12 million in sales not counting OS upgrades for existing macs. So even if the 2 million sold this past weekend and 12 million over the next 18 months are total sales (14 million), then the sales this past weekend would be 14 percent of the sales over the life (2 divided by 14). Again, that's without OS upgrade sales. Maybe Paul's excluding bundled copies with new macs, but then he includes bundled Vista copies with new PCs in his sales discussions for Vista, so you can't have it both ways.
cesjr
on Oct 30, 2007
sorry, meant 40-50 percent of the life of Leopard

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