February Mac Sales: Insanely Not Great

Apple’s recent desktop refresh couldn’t have come at a better time, because February was a lousy month for Mac sales.

With consumers postponing their Mac purchases in expectation of a desktop refresh, Apple saw double-digit declines in Mac sales for the month, according to the latest NPD data. They were down 16 percent compared to February of 2008. A decline, but one that’s not quite as grave as it first seems, as Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes. “[We] note that year-over-year Mac performance faced a tough comp in the month of February 2009 due to the February 2008 MacBook Air launch,” Munster explained. “That said, we expect Mac NPD data to rebound in the month of March due to the shipment of new iMacs, Mac minis, and Mac Pros in early March.”

For the March quarter, Munster believes Apple (AAPL) will sell between 2 and 2.2 million Macs–a decline of between 13 and 14 percent. Not so bad considering that Gartner predicts PC sales will chart their sharpest unit decline in history this year. Really, the fact that Apple is selling desktops at all in this economy is worth cheering.