Charles Haddad, the “Byte of the Apple” columnist for Business Week Online , says the Titanium PowerBook G4 is a “hit,” just as he predicted it would be.
In his latest column, Haddad points out that, back in February (the 28th, to be exact), he forecast that TiPB sales would put Apple back into the profitability category.
“Jobs & Co. aren’t in the black yet, but early sales figures show the TiBook is indeed starting to rekindle growth,” he said. “Let’s look at the latest numbers. In February, the first full month the TiBook was for sale, it accounted for 52 percent of Apple’s laptop sales and 16 percent of the total, according to industry consultant NPD Intelect. Feverish demand for the TiBook drove Apple’s laptop sales up 23 percent in February from a month earlier. Such a performance left the rest of the industry in the dust, with overall laptop sales up only 2.3 percent that month.”
Haddad points out that some Wintel makers even saw their laptop sales sink. Compaq and Toshiba reported sales declines of 5.8 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively. The columnist opines that, in the near term, the success of the titanium laptop is even more important than the success of Mac OS X.
“That’s not to say the new operating system is trivial, but software will never rival computers as a moneymaker for Apple,” Haddad said. “At the end of the day, it’s still cool new Macs that keep the company’s ping-pong court lit. Software such as OS X is the candy that tempts users to buy new Macs.”