The latest domestic sales data from the NPD Group shows that US Mac sales up 13% in the first two months of the fourth quarter, Wall Street watchers expect Apple will handily exceed at the end of December.

Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray revealed the latest NPD data for October and November on Monday, noting that the numbers are "soft" compared to what is expected of Apple for the December quarter. But the data only represents Apple's Mac sales in the U.S.(mac related: mac video converter), and does not include the platform's worldwide growth.



Investors generally expect Apple to sell about 5.2 million Macs in the December quarter, which would translate to year over year growth of 25 percent. The NPD data showed desktop units up 5 percent year over year in the month of November, while notebooks were up 9 percent from 2010.

Munster is maintaining his projection of between 5.1 million and 5.3 million Mac sales in the December quarter (mac related: flac to mp3 mac ), which would be a record for the company. He noted that last year, 48 percent of NPD units in the December quarter came in the month of December. Munster estimates that Mac sales will represent 18 percent of Apple's overall revenue in December.