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New Apple Notebooks Boost Mac Sales By 28%

Apple’s latest line of notebook computers has helped the company stay ahead of the pack, while Mac sales grew by 25% when compared to this time last year.

Gene Munster, a long time Apple analyst for Piper Jaffray, relayed some data by market research firm NPD Group, in a note to clients. As AppleInsider explains, Munster says Mac sales were up 28% when compared to the same month exactly one year ago. The October 14th Notebook Media Event definitely helped hammer home sales of the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros, which aside from some complaints, have been warmly accepted.

Munster continues to explain that even though he analyzes NPD’s data every month, he is going to wait until statistics from the months of November and December get finalized, before making a prediction as to how many Macs Apple sold in the fourth quarter of 2008. AppleInsider continues to explain that based on his experience, Munster is issuing a “preliminary prediction of quarterly Mac sales of between 2.5 million to 2.7 million units — a range generally in line with Wall Street’s consensus of 2.6 million units.”

“Given the MacBook launch in October, growth rates for Mac will likely decline in the months of November and December,” Munster explained to clients. “That said, our 25 hours counting Macs in US Apple stores from November 9th-16th suggest Mac demand remains healthy, and was up 90 percent year-over-year, and down 5 percent sequentially.”

Additionally, NPD’s data regarding iPod sales show the music player’s resilience in giving up market share, even if to its family member the iPhone. With the holiday season around the corner, Munster believes that Apple may still track sales between 18.5 to 19 million iPods during the months of October, November and December.

Apple sold 22.1 million iPods during this quarter last year, which represents a 14 to 16% decline. However, Apple sold roughly 2.31 million iPhones in the December quarter last year. Munster projects Apple to sell 6.4 million iPhones during this year’s final fiscal quarter, meaning that they will have sold 1 million more handheld devices than this time last year.

Despite the expectation for an extended consumer slowdown hitting the consumer electronics space, we believe Apple is well-positioned to weather the storm,” Munster said. “The company has recently leveraged its unit volumes in the iPod, Mac, and iPhone businesses to lower prices moderately while generally maintaining margins.”

At the moment shares of Apple (AAPL) are trading around $89.46 up nearly $1.32 (1.50%) per share.