Snow Leopard Outselling Leopard 2 to 1

Snow Leopard’s under-the-hood improvements and low price point are evidently making up for the operating system’s lack of new bells and whistles. Market research outfit NPD reports that the latest iteration of Apple’s Mac OS X is selling twice as fast as Leopard and almost four times faster than Tiger.

And it continues to sell well. While Leopard and Tiger sales declined more than 60 percent after their first week at market, sales of Snow Leopard have only declined 25 percent in the two weeks it’s been available.

“Even though some considered Snow Leopard to be less feature-focused than the releases of Leopard or Tiger, the ease of upgrading to Snow Leopard and the affordable pricing made it a win-win for Apple computer owners–thus helping to push sales to record numbers,” NPD’s Stephen Baker said in an announcement.

“With pricing reduced by more than $100 for both the single-user and five-user pack versus Leopard pricing,” Baker added, “Apple has clearly demonstrated that aggressive pricing policies in this economic environment generate an outstanding consumer response.”

In a research note issued earlier this summer, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated that Apple (AAPL) would sell about five million copies of Snow Leopard in the quarter in which it was launched. And while that number might have seemed optimistic at the time, it’s looking increasingly more reasonable. Leopard, as you might recall, sold more than two million copies its first weekend at market. If Snow Leopard is selling twice as quickly, Apple should have no trouble hitting Munster’s target and perhaps even passing it.