Regarding the updated MacBook Air… Apple’s expected to sell a few of them.
Per DigiTimes, Apple’s new 11.6″ and 13.3″ MacBook Air notebooks have been forecast as selling 700,000 units in the holiday quarter, a Wall Street analyst anticipating gross margins of about 32%.
The research department of Concord Securities has reportedly predicted that the MacBook Air will account for 17% of an estimated 4.1 million Mac shipments this fall. In addition, Mingchi Kuo, vice president of the firm’s research department, believes the new, smaller model with an 11.6″ screen will account for 60% of MacBook Air sales.
Sales of 4.1 million Macs in the quarter would be yet another record for Apple. Just this week, the company revealed it sold 3.89 million Macs in the previous quarter, the best three-month frame for the company yet.
Apple’s Mac business was on display this week at the “Back to the Mac” event, where the new MacBook Airs with instant-on capabilities were unveiled. The notebooks start at US$999 for the 11.6″ model.
Analyst Brian Marshall of Gleacher & Company said in a note to investors this week that he believes Apple’s new MacBook Air models carry a gross margin profile of greater than 30%. If true, that would be greater than his estimated blended margins of more than 20% for the rest of Apple’s notebook line.
Marshall estimated that the blended gross margins for the new MacBook Air models will be 32.1%. He sees the low-end US$999 model with a total cost to Apple of US$718, while the high-end 13.3″ model with 256GB of storage retailing for US$1,599 likely costs Apple US$1,007.40 to produce.
That being said, you might want to put a new MacBook Air on reserve if at all possible…