Apple's new OS Leopard selling well, driving stock up

[admin]

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Apple Inc. saw booming sales of the latest version of its operating system over the weekend, which may help boost momentum for the company's line of Mac computers during the holiday season.

Apple (AAPL:Apple Inc
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AAPL 188.43, +3.34, +1.8%) said Tuesday that 2 million copies of its Leopard operating system were sold since the product was released on Friday, Oct. 26.
But those sales represent the software copies of Leopard, not Mac computers that now come pre-installed with Leopard. And coming off a quarter in which Apple sold 2.16 million Macs running the previous operating system called Tiger, the question facing Apple is whether Leopard will be a force in adding to Mac sales during the end-of-the-year holiday shopping season.
"Consumers typically don't understand or know why they should care about an operating system," said J.P. Gownder, principal analyst with Forrester Research. "But in the Apple ecosystem, there are lots of evangelists that play a large role in proselytizing for Apple."
Apple has a tough act to follow regarding Mac sales. In addition to Apple just coming off its first quarter of more than 2 million Mac sales, technology research firm Gartner Inc. said Apple claimed about 8% of the U.S. PC market during the third quarter of the year.
Most analysts expect Mac sales to weaken slightly in the December quarter, as sales have historically been stronger during the back-to-school season. Apple shipped 1.6 million Macs during the final quarter of 2006.
Analyst Keith Bachman of BMO Capital Markets called the first weekend of Leopard's sales "impressive" and said his estimates for 2.15 million Mac sales for the quarter will likely turn out to be lower than Apple's final results.
In a research note, Bachman said Mac sales "will be in a barbell distribution this quarter, [with] lots of sales at the beginning with Leopard's release, and at the end of the quarter with holidays."
Bachman holds an outperform rating and $200 a share price target on Apple's stock.
Among the features built into Leopard is Boot Camp, an application that allows Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT:Microsoft Corporation
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MSFT 35.35, +0.78, +2.3%) Windows operating system to run on a Mac. The operating system also includes Quick Look, a program that lets a person see what is inside a file without having to open it, and Time Machine, a program that automatically backs up everything on the computer.
Rex Crum is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

[tribaljunkee]

the new OS leopard is getting amazing reviews. no surprise the stock is doing great. 200 bucks a share by end of first quarter next year

[a n t]

over the last few months I think they added a lot more to Leapord before the final release was finished... apple's site lists all the new features. I can't see one mac user not buying this upgrade. although, what's really going to give this stock another boost is iphone in europe. holiday sales of the new ipods should be nice too.

[woo]

ur right ant im actually going to buy the upgrade. i watched the demo and im sold.