Snow Leopard Sales More than Double Leopard Sales

Sales of Mac OS X, or Snow Leopard, clocked in at more than double compared to Leopard for the first five weeks each OS was available. Apple confirmed the strong Snow Leopard figure during the company's fourth quarter earnings conference call on Monday afternoon.

"This doubling was much more than we had planned and we were very pleasantly surprised by it," said Apple COO Tim Cook during the earnings report.

Those sales figures included Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade packages along with five-license Family Packs.

Apple broke from its usual US$129 price point for Mac OS X to offer Snow Leopard for $29 as an upgrade price for Leopard users. The company offered its five-user Family Pack version for $49.

The lower price played a role in the quick adoption of Snow Leopard, as did the promise of better performance, stability and security. The release of Snow Leopard also marked the first version of Mac OS X to drop support for PowerPC-based Macs in favor of just Intel-based models.

When asked by one analyst if the price cut worked, Mr. Cook responded "Yes, it did."

Apple reported record Mac and iPhone sales for the quarter, exceeding analyst expectations. The company sold 3.05 million Macs, 7.4 million iPhones, and 10.2 million iPods, and reported $9.87 billion in sales with a $1.67 billion profit.