Demand for MacBook Air increased sharply

The temporary shortage of MacBook Air shows that Apple's demand for this new line of laptops is very high, according to Wall Street analyst.

According to Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities , the supply of several models at Apple stores is in short supply. That is the 11 'high-end model (currently out of stock) and the popular 13' model. This deficiency is not very common, but the demand is very high.

Mr. White's conclusions are based on on-site inspections at Apple retail stores.

However, there is no lack of MacBook Air in Apple's online store: since the new item was launched and launched on July 20, 2011, all models have delivery times within 24 hours from when ordering.

Mr. White said that the increase in MacBook Air demand is because Apple has improved the performance of this device. Apple has increased RAM for 3 of 4 MacBook Air models from 2GB to 4GB, and changed the previous Intel Core 2 Duo processor with faster CPU with Intel's new Sandy Bridge architecture.

The new MacBook Air models have the same price as the previous models, from $ 999 (~ 20.6 million) to $ 1,599 (~ 33 million), and these laptops have some changes to the exterior design. with a total change in October 2010 by Apple.

According to Mr. White's note, the MacBook Air notebook often removes many things to be thin and light. But this time, customers will buy a high-performance device.

Tests by Macworld.com show that the new MacBook Air 11 'costs $ 999 (~ 20.6 million), which is twice as fast in many processing tasks as compared to the same model released in October 2010. And the new MacBook Air 13 'can compete with the MacBook Pro equipped with Core i5 processor with 2.3GHz 13' price of $ 1,199 (~ 24.7 million) initially. This result also shows that MacBook Air is more efficient by using flash storage for notebooks.

Mr. White said that he did not know exactly how the MacBook Air would sell well, because Apple did not thoroughly analyze the two lines of Air and Pro laptops in its quarterly sales.

He said it would not be surprising if the MacBook Air is the best-selling Mac product in many Apple stores. This product has been and is still an important factor in driving Mac growth in general.

Mr. White makes sense to talk about Mac growth. Apple sold 2.8 million laptops in the second quarter of 2011, up 13% from the same period in 2010. Overall, Mac sales grew 14%, significantly more than the computing industry in general, but The industry increased by only 2.3% and 2.6% according to Gartner and IDC.

In Mr. White's two comments, the second opinion was agreed by another analyst, and the first was rejected by this person.

Stephen Baker of NPD Group, when talking about Air sales before the July 20 refresh, said it was a significant sales growth rate, but not the majority of Apple's laptop sales.

Mr. Baker cited Apple's average selling price (ASP): after introducing the MacBook Air to re-design in October 2010, Apple's laptop ASP actually increased, although the price of $ 999 was one. The only two Apple laptops have that price.

White also disagrees with rumors that Apple will soon release the MacBook Air 15 '.

When answering questions about the possibility of a larger MacBook Air, Mr. White said, people prefer the smaller, lighter Air device because it's convenient to carry around. With size 15 ', this purpose will not be suitable.

In fact, he said the test results show that users tend to favor a smaller MacBook Air 11 '.

When asked about whether Apple will collect laptops from 2 to only 1 line, he said there is still room for the MacBook Pro. Air's storage can be filled up quite quickly.

Unlike the MacBook Pro, which uses a traditional hard drive, the Air uses a solid-state drive (SSD) without moving parts. But Air's storage space only peaked at 256GB according to the standard configuration, while the MacBook Pro 13's hard drive has a standard of 500GB and a higher-end Pro 15 'drive is 750GB.

Mr. White said, MacBook Air is another big success for Apple. It maintains growth in its portfolio and is still rumored when Apple is entering the third quarter, which is the time when White and most other analysts predict the company will launch the next generation iPhone. next.