San Francisco – The Port Washington, NY based global market research company, NPD Group has affirmed that Apple's new OS X Leopard is the best ever operating system on the market. According to the company, Apple's OS X Leopard got a brilliant start with the company moving 2 million copies of the operating system in just two days; the sales of Leopard during its first full month on store shelves beat out all other operating systems Apple has ever released.

Comparing the first full month of sales of Apple Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" (November 2007) to the first full month of sales for Mac OS 10.4 "Tiger" (May 2005), the market research firm on Monday revealed that the “dollar volume for Leopard was up 32.8 percent and unit volume up 20.5 percent”.

Chris Swenson, an NPD analyst stated that the launch of Leopard was the best ever Aapple’s release. Leopard sales were 20.5 percent higher, as compared to sales of Tiger (OS X 10.4) in May 2005. Tiger itself represented a 30 percent increase over the 2003 Panther launch, and 100 percent more than the 2002 release of Jaguar.
Swenson said, "It's really stunning to see Apple have one blow-out OS launch after another. It's clear that Apple has hit upon the right strategy for rolling out new versions of its OS."

According to the NPD analyst, the figures show that Apple has found the right formula for rolling out new versions of Mac operating systems. The holiday season launch date probably was one of the major reasons of Leopard success, but factor of the delayed launch also can’t be ignored. Leopard was originally supposed to be released back in April before all those engineers were moved over to iPhone duty. Of course, pent up demand usually only accounts for rapid initial sales and not so much the long term burn.

The maker of the Macintosh computer, the iPod digital music player and the iPhone smartphone, Apple started selling Leopard on October 25, after a four-month delay due to the company's work on the iPhone.

The Apple OS X software's new version costs $129 for a single user and $199 for a "family pack" that can be installed on as many as five computers in a single household. The new features include a file back-up feature called "Time Machine," improvements to e-mail and instant messaging, and the ability to preview documents or files without starting up a separate program, as well as quick access to other computers on a home or an office network.

According to the NPD Group, Leopard is the sixth version in as many years, a fact the Cupertino, California-based concern is quick to contrast with Microsoft Corp, which went more than five years between new versions of its Windows operating system. Microsoft's Windows Vista became broadly available early this year and comes in several versions that cost between $100 and $260.