MacBook Pro Selling Well at Amazon and Best Buy

Apple has long been a subscriber to the underpromise-and-over-deliver school of guidance theory, so it’s not unusual to see research houses raising their guidance on Apple in advance of its fourth-quarter financials, which the company is set to report on Monday, Oct. 19. Among those doing so today: Morgan Keegan, whose Tavis McCourt says the June refresh of the MacBook Pro line and the recent launch of Snow Leopard have juiced sales a bit–particularly at Amazon (AMZN) and Best Buy (BBY).

“Apple continues to execute well across its major product categories,” McCourt wrote in a note to clients today. “…we believe trends are faring better than expected, with a notable increase in Mac demand following the release of Snow Leopard in early September. We believe this reflects the improved value proposition of the MacBook Pro line (updated last June with new price points), which have been performing particularly well on both Amazon and Best Buy’s top sellers charts, two web sites that we believe provide a decent proxy for sell-through trends in the U.S. consumer PC market.” (See chart below; click to enlarge.)

Given this, McCourt expects Apple to exceed consensus estimates and its own guidance–a safe bet since the company’s been doing this for a while now.