Proof that humanity has not learnt much from the economic crash. A US analyst claims that Apple is set to make a killing next year flogging its over priced gear to punters with more money than sense.

Robert Cihra, a Caris & Company analyst predicts that Mac unit sales will grow 26 percent year-on-year in 2010, compared to 16 percent for the overall PC industry. It means that the moment that people recover from the recession they are apparently happy to waste their cash on overpriced PCs whose functions can be obtained for about half the price.

Cihra claims that Apple will make its killing because of the way it controls its customers. He said that the method Jobs' Mob uses to control its product cycles and pricing as reasons why Mac sales will boom next year. Cihra predicts that Mac unit sales will grow 1.6 faster than the PC industry in 2010, and in the past three years have grown 1.8 faster that the industry, according to the report.

While Apple had to reduce the price of its PCs by ten per cent in 2009 it is still a premium of 1.8 times that of Windows PCs, Cihra says in the report. Everytime someone buys a Mac, Steve Jobs banks $340 in gross profit-per-unit. This is two to three times that of a Windows PC. In other words Jobs could sell his gizmos for a third of the price, but the fact he just convinces people to buy them at that price means he gets huge wodges of cash.

Despite the fact that Apple gear is probably the biggest marketing success story in the history of IT the 26 percent growth forecast is a bit ambitious. Cihra thinks that Mac sales will continue to grow because Jobs sticks loads of models out there at a slightly reduced price which could means that people might suddenly start thinking that they are a bit more value for money.

Of course they are still wrong. Cihra thinks that they will have to go a long way before they are anything like value for money. But people are still dumb enough to buy them anyway.