[科技前沿]雪豹：蘋果6600萬美元的操作系統

Snow Leopard: Apple's $66 million OS

As expected, the latest update to Apple's (AAPL) flagship Macintosh operating system — Mac OS X Snow Leopard — is going on sale Aug. 28 for the previously announced price of $29.

Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster has done some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations and concluded Apple is in it less for the money than for the strategic advantage it hopes to gain over MicrosoFT's (MSFT) Windows 7, schedule to ship in October.

According to Munster, Apple is likely to sell 5 million copies of Mac OS X v10.6 in the remaining month of its fiscal fourth quarter for an average selling price of of $22 — less than $29 and more than the $9.95 Up-to-Date price Apple has offered customers who bought MacBook Pros after June 8.

At 60% gross margin, that comes out to $66 million, or $.05 per share — a bump that Munster believes has already been baked into the Street's Q4 estimates.

So what's really going on here, he asks rhetorically?

Despite the long list of improvements Apple is touting — it claims to have "refined" 90% of the more than 1,000 "projects" that make up the OS X — Munster describes Snow Leopard as "a minor upgrade … without many significant new features."

In Munster's view, Apple is using Snow Leopard as

"an opportunity to sell it at a lower price ($29 vs. $129 previously) and market the new OS as a selling point for the Mac platform over the Windows platform. In other words, Apple is promoting the Mac platform as a superior alternative to Windows in terms of newer technology, more frequently, for less money. The release of Snow Leopard is not about new features; rather, it is about keeping Mac users up to date with the latest technology vs. Windows XP and Vista users on antiquated technology."

不出所料，蘋果公司（Apple）的旗艦Macintosh操作系統的最新升級——Mac OS X 雪豹（Snow Leopard）——將自8月28日起以此前宣佈的29美元的價格開始發售。

Piper Jaffray的吉恩•蒙斯特（Gene Munster）進行了粗略的估算，並得出結論稱蘋果此舉不是爲了賺錢，而是爲了獲得對微軟（Microsoft）的Windows 7的戰略優勢，後者預定於10月發貨。

蒙斯特表示，在其第4財季剩下的一個月裏，蘋果可能將以22美元的平均售價售出500萬份Mac OS X v10.6。此價格低於29美元，但高於蘋果向於6月8日後購買MacBook Pro的顧客收取的9.95美元的更新價格。

以毛利爲60%計，這將是6600萬美元，或者說是每股0.05美元——蒙斯特相信華爾街的第四季度預期已將此計算在內。

蒙斯特反問道，那麼到底是怎麼回事呢？

儘管蘋果大肆吹噓自己進行了大量改進——它自稱“改良”了組成OS X的1000多個“項目”中的90%——但蒙斯特稱雪豹爲“較小的升級……沒有太多重要的新功能”。

在蒙斯特看來，蘋果正將雪豹用作“一個以較低價格（29美元較之先前的129美元）出售OS X的機會，並能將新的OS作爲Mac平臺優於Windows平臺的一個賣點。換言之，蘋果正將Mac平臺作爲一個比Windows更優的選項進行宣傳，前者更頻繁的採用更新的技術，且價格更便宜。發佈雪豹並非關乎新功能；而是關乎使Mac用戶能使用最新技術，而Windows XP和Vista用戶則沿用過時的技術。”