Halo effect boosts Mac sales

Rethink IT, August, 2005

The Halo effect seems confirmed at Apple Computers, with the rising tide of iPod sales, expected to reach 5.5m in the quarter to the end of June, dragging up PC retail sales at Apple.

This quarter was always going to be strong, with 2m copies of OS XTiger shipping and bringing in $250m extra, new revenue dollars, but now NPD is saying that Macs are also up 79% on this time last year.

Researcher NPD was cited by Credit Suisse First Boston as it gave more reasons to buy Apple shares.Apple numbers are out in mid July.

The NPD figures showed that Apple Computer was the big winner in a slowing market, and it grew its unit sales 79% year-over-year overall and 94% year-over-year in standalone retail.

Gateway also made something of a comeback, up 37% while Hewlett-Packard struggled, down 10%.

Although Dell is never shown in retail PC sales counts because it ships most of its PCs directly, Dell found its way into the news with Michael Dell saying in an interview with Fortune Magazine, that he'd be happy to sell Mac OS XTiger, giving rise to the idea of a Dellintosh. We prefer MacDell.