Apple Sells 1.1 Million MacBook Airs in Fourth Quarter of 2010

[Wiley John Wright]

The MacBook Air is a huge hit for Apple with an estimated 1.1 million 11-inch and 13-inch models sold during the fourth quarter of last year. The MacBook Air launch has been the most successful Mac launch for Apple to date. That’s quite an achievement considering just how successful the entire MacBook line has been for Apple over the years.

When discussing sales, Apple rarely breaks down these figures by model type. Apple prefers to keep this information to themselves in order to keep their competitors in the dark. During the fourth quarter of last year, Apple made $3.7 billion on notebooks alone with 2.9 million units sold, according to the annual shareholders conference call. However, sources inside Asia indicate that Apple did in fact sell over 1.1 million MacBook Airs during that same quarter.

Sales for the current quarter indicate that the MacBook Air is still selling well, however, sales have dipped since they went on sale last October. So far Apple has sold fewer than 700,000 units this year.

Although the MacBook Air line is priced higher than its competitors, people obviously don’t mind paying a premium to own an Apple product. The latest MacBook Air models, while extremely light, aren’t equipped with Intel’s latest processors. The MacBook Air does compensate for this by including a solid-state drive as standard equipment. This improves speed considerably for all but the most processor intensive tasks.

With the latest MacBook Pros featuring Intel’s faster Sandy Bridge processors, can the MacBook Air compete using processors that are slightly out-of-date? If these sales figures are any indication, then the currently MacBook Air line has a bright future ahead of it. After all, Apple finally released an 11-inch netbook, though I’m pretty sure they would never call it that.

Source: AppleInsider

[StealthBravo]

That is an amazing number. wow.

[romeo_herman]

Next month I will buy one also.....

[Poseidon79]

I'm one of those 1.1 million. I am totally digging my 11" air with 128gb ssd, 4GB RAM and 1.6ghz processor. Wicked fast for those specs and never ever gets hot like the first gen air.

[psilocybin]

Love my MacBook air. No regrets at all

[steve-z17]

Job well done Apple! That's awesome!

[StealthBravo]

I'm one of those 1.1 million. I am totally digging my 11" air with 128gb ssd, 4GB RAM and 1.6ghz processor. Wicked fast for those specs and never ever gets hot like the first gen air.

The SSD addition to my MBP made it wicked fast too

[psilocybin]

firmware is different on the mbas as well though allowing instant wake up. cant instant wake a mbp

thin and cool, mba is great

[StealthBravo]

Yea the 3 sec delay sucks

[steve-z17]

The SSD addition to my MBP made it wicked fast too

That's sweet! Makes me want to switch out for one! Sounds like its well worth the $$!

[The6uest]

The way Apple is going, I wouldn't doubt it if they made a MacBook tablet one day. When they announced Lion, Jobs said it would "combine the power of Mac OS X with the magic of iPad" and its design has many similarities to iOS. I think a Mac tablet would be pretty cool especially if it could switch between OSX and iOS. This along with the Mac AppStore would make it a really productive yet also entertaining product.

[StealthBravo]

That's sweet! Makes me want to switch out for one! Sounds like its well worth the $$!

It is well worth it. iTunes starts up in 2 secs now

[hacktarded1]

I also recently bought a MacBook Air for more content creation related work that is just annoying to do on my iPad. I love this thing! Went with the 11" model with 128 GB, upgraded 4GB of RAM and a 1.60 ghz processor as well. Also am running windows 7 on bootcamp for some of my work related Microsoft based programs. I have to say this thing runs both OSs flawlessly! It's a truly incredible computer.