[Northy]

More recently, the company indicated that of the 27.5 million installed base of Mac OS X users, 37% are running Leopard. That would be 10.1 million Macs running Leopard. Apple has sold roughly 4.6 million new Macs in the last three quarters with Leopard pre-installed. That means “only” 5.5 million Macs have been upgraded to Leopard.

But Apple didn’t earn something like $709 million by selling 5.5 million boxes for $129 or more. It only reported $210 million in total revenues in Leopard sales over first six months, and has sold less than $40 million worth of Leopard since then. That’s less than $250 million in total retail software sales. Clearly, a lot of retail boxes are getting applied on multiple Macs using the family pack or are simply being installed on multiple Macs contrary to the license agreement. Big surprise: lots of people are stealing Leopard.

So of the 27.5 million Macs that perhaps could be using Leopard, “only” 37% have been upgraded, and about half of those got Leopard by buying a new Mac. That’s great compared to the percentages of retail software upgrades for Windows, but indicates that setting a lowball price for Snow Leopard wouldn’t have a major impact on new sales; it would only leave money on the table that Apple could otherwise earn from a reasonable charge for its software work.

User comments:
"The family pack is one of the best consumer loyalty deals going."

"It’s true that as a pure feature [Grand Central], it’s not going to queue-up customers at the stores on release day. However, once the pro apps and even iLife are upgraded to use GC, we’ll see some seriously increased demand."

"In the most recent 4 quarters Apple has sold nearly $2 billion in software. As a percentage of overall revenue it’s only about 6%. I don’t know if I’d say Apple doesn’t make much on software. $2 billion makes them one of the worlds largest software makers."

"I think that there’s an interesting timing issue here. Right about the time that Mac requests will start to hit corporate IT departments like a tidal wave, IMHO, there will be this new version of the system that is “Exchange Server Compatible.” [echo, echo, echo] Corporate IT managers seem to only recognize the word Exchange on packaging so they will wipe their brow, with their Vista logo towel, and purchase a bunch of licenses for those pesky Mac people. We might see a huge bump in sales if only because it says EXCHANGE on the box."

"What’s important to remember is this eternal truth of operating systems and hardware: it doesn’t matter how ideal you think either one of them is, or both together: without end-user applications that people want to use and actually do use for their desires and needs, the hardware and the software are only useful for consuming resources in terms of time, money and energy, and contribute essentially nothing to humanity. If the OS is too hard to work with, it won’t gain enough traction: if the hardware is too hard to work with, it won’t gain traction: if the hardware is too expensive to work with for those needing it, it won’t gain traction: if the software is too expensive for people that want/need it, it won’t gain traction. Apple has past examples that demonstrate all of those to some degree or another, and those examples occupy landfills. But, that’s just Apple, and they’re far from the only company with such things in their histories. So, too, was the other company that Jobs brought about in the same field: sure, was great hardware and software, but… well, fortunately, it’s been brought back into the fold to where the unwashed masses can afford to take advantage of it, after a long delay and a lot of work to make it more management-friendly for mere mortals."