An anticipated refresh to the MacBook Air lineup, bringing Intel's latest generation Sandy Bridge processors, as well as the launch of Lion could boost Apple's thin-and-light notebook to build orders of 1.5 million per quarter, one Wall Street analyst believes.



From Apple Insider:

A MacBook Air refresh, along with the impending release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, is expected to boost Mac sales even more, as Apple's computers have consistently outgrown the rest of the PC market for years now. Whitmore has forecast sales of 18 million Macs in calendar year 2011, but he said Monday that he now believes his estimate is conservative.

Whitmore also noted that he expects the operating margins for Lion to be slightly higher than with past upgrades, because Lion will be sold exclusively through the Mac App Store and will not carry any retail distribution costs. He sees Lion with an operating margin of around 90 percent, while previous software upgrades were around 85 percent.

  Apple predicted to ship 1.5M Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs with Lion per quarter