Leopard Leapfrogs Tiger as Most Successful OS X Launch

Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Leopard launch is the most successful operating system release the company has ever experienced, The NPD Group has reported, based on data collected by 50 retail points of sale that include Apple stores as well as brick-and-mortar retail sales from Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Office Depot (NYSE: ODP) and Target. Indirect e-commerce sales from retailers like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), Buy.com and NewEgg.com also figure into the mix.

To measure Leopard's sales, The NPD Group compared the first full month of sales of Apple Mac OS 10.5 Leopard to the first full month of sales for Mac OS 10.4 Tiger and found that dollar volume for Leopard was up 32.8 percent and unit volume was up 20.5 percent when compared to Tiger dollars and units. These numbers exclude the 2 million copies of Leopard that Apple said it sold the first weekend it was offered.

While Leopard launched Oct. 26, 2007, and Tiger launched April 29, 2005, NPD compared the first full month of sales to ensure a relatively stable comparison. In this case -- November for Leopard and May for Tiger -- the two months that both have four selling weeks, although November is in the middle of a consumer holiday buying season.

More Stores

Still, the biggest reason for the leap may be Apple's aggressive retail Apple Store rollout.

"The Apple Stores are hugely important because they literally doubled the number of stores from the Tiger launch," Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis for The NPD Group, told MacNewsWorld.

"They had around 100 stores, and now they have over 200. In the past, Apple was saying, 'If the retailers aren't carrying our stuff, how can we increase sales?'" he added, noting that even though many big brick-and-mortar retailers don't carry Apple's computer products, the company's retail strategy is clearly working.

"Apple had to create their own distribution," he said. "So what do they do? They pick demographic market areas where people make the most money -- it's no big mystery why there's three stores in Manhattan and no store in the strip mall in Arkansas."

Upward Trend

Obviously, the iPod and iPhone have put Apple on the map for many retail computer buyers, and while measuring the iPod/iPhone halo effect is difficult, it's easier to chart the progress of Apple's OS sales.

By comparison, Swenson reports, when Tiger was launched, Apple sold 30 percent more units of 10.4 Tiger than 10.3 Panther, and 100 percent more units of 10.4 Tiger than 10.2 Jaguar.

"It's really stunning to see Apple have one blow-out OS launch after another," he noted.

So how many copies has Leopard sold? That's hard to say. When it comes to public relations, Apple is a secretive company that only talks when it wants to, and while the NPD Group does track total volume and total unit sales data, the research group declines to publish it publicly.

All in the Family

Another interesting trend is the sales of Apple's Family Pack, where buyers get five licenses for the household at a price that's slightly less than the cost of two separate licenses.

"With regard to Family Packs, 32.8 percent of Leopard unit sales in the first full month were of the Family Pack version, compared to 20.4 percent of Tiger unit sales," Swenson reported. "By comparison, Family Packs accounted for 9 percent of 10.3 shipments and 5 percent of 10.2 shipments."

Many households in the general PC market now contain more than one PC, so this data isn't particularly surprising, but it does point to the idea that a solid portion of Leopard sales aren't coming from recent consumers switching from PCs to Macs.

A Perfect Storm

Can one revolutionary product -- the iPhone -- be responsible for another big increase in retail sales?

"I think all of the media attention it received has certainly raised awareness about Apple and its products, but it's a combination of things," Swenson explained. "It's their TV commercials, the Web ad campaign that leverages those TV assets, their 200-plus retail store locations, the sales staff in those stores, etc., etc."

Apple's current retail share in terms of unit share in desktop and notebook sales is 12.2 percent in the retail channels as of September 2007, Swenson said. In January 2006, it was only 6.6 percent.

"So Apple has pretty much doubled their unit share in not quite two years, so that shows you they've done extremely well in retail," he added. The NPD Group doesn't track direct sales from Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) or HP's (NYSE: HPQ) online businesses, which would bring the actual share percentages down if they were factored in, he noted.