Robust Sales Make ‘Quasi-tablet’ MacBook Air A $2.2b-per-year Cash Cow For Apple

Appleinsider’s Neil Hughes reports that more than five months after the second-generation MacBook Air’s debut, adoption rates remain robust positioning the air as a meaningful growth driver for Apple and raking in a projected $2.2 billion a year.

Hughes cites an investors’ note by J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz on Monday that says checks with Apple’s supply chain indicate that the MacBook Air continues to be a strong performer for Apple, indicating that “blistering sales” in the fourth calendar quarter of 2010, in which 420,000 MacBook Air units shipped (representing 333% improvement yoy, 326.8 qoq and three times greater than the MacBook Air mark 1’s record quarterly high), were not a blip based on novelty, and carrying over into Q1 2011 during which the MacBook Air accounted for greater than 10% of total Mac system sales and 15% of total notebook sales during the quarter, as opposed to 5% a year earlier, accounting for 4.9% of Mac unit sales and 5.4% of Mac revenue in all of 2010 despite being available for less than a full quarter of that year, and with Apple reportedly doubling orders in February to cope with demand.

Moskowitz credits iPad features borrowed by the new MacBook Air — eg: instant-on capability and a thin, light, ultra-portabile form-factor that make Apple’s smallest notebook sort of a “quasi-tablet,” but with a real keyboard desktop operating system to support serious professional work capability, suggests that the Air mark 2 will get its first refresh in June with adoption of Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, and predicts that Apple’s MacBook Air revenues could reach $2.2 billion or more annually.

For the full Appleinsider report visit here:
http://bit.ly/gQ0xKJ

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt also has a report here:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/04/the-2-2-billion-macbook-air/