[科技前沿]雪豹：苹果6600万美元的操作系统

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，苹果公司（Apple）的旗舰Macintosh操作系统的最新升级——Mac OS X 雪豹（Snow Leopard）——将自8月28日起以此前宣布的29美元的价格开始发售。

Piper Jaffray的吉恩•蒙斯特（Gene Munster）进行了粗略的估算，并得出结论称苹果此举不是为了赚钱，而是为了获得对微软（Microsoft）的Windows 7的战略优势，后者预定于10月发货。

蒙斯特表示，在其第4财季剩下的一个月里，苹果可能将以22美元的平均售价售出500万份Mac OS X v10.6。此价格低于29美元，但高于苹果向于6月8日后购买MacBook Pro的顾客收取的9.95美元的更新价格。

以毛利为60%计，这将是6600万美元，或者说是每股0.05美元——蒙斯特相信华尔街的第四季度预期已将此计算在内。

蒙斯特反问道，那么到底是怎么回事呢？

尽管苹果大肆吹嘘自己进行了大量改进——它自称“改良”了组成OS X的1000多个“项目”中的90%——但蒙斯特称雪豹为“较小的升级……没有太多重要的新功能”。

在蒙斯特看来，苹果正将雪豹用作“一个以较低价格（29美元较之先前的129美元）出售OS X的机会，并能将新的OS作为Mac平台优于Windows平台的一个卖点。换言之，苹果正将Mac平台作为一个比Windows更优的选项进行宣传，前者更频繁的采用更新的技术，且价格更便宜。发布雪豹并非关乎新功能；而是关乎使Mac用户能使用最新技术，而Windows XP和Vista用户则沿用过时的技术。”