What's With Apples Marketing Scheme???

[rEd Eye]

I just don't understand it!.If Apple wants a more significant portion of the computer consumer market,and therefore more support from software developers(and to earn a hell of a lot more money),why do they charge +150% more for their products than leading PC manufacturers?Why net sell the computers competitivly priced with the PC market?If this happened,I believe that Apple could easily take over 50% of the market(right now it's what?+-5%?),cause most people would like to own a Mac,but no one can F#@#in afford one!(except the elite and the very determined)
The sum of this statement/question, is that almost any manufacturer and distributer of goods worldwide knows very well,that if you sell more for less,you sell many more and make much more$$$!!!.so what gives???
(Yes I own a Mac and a PC,and would like to upgrade from my 400mhz G4,but I find the Mac pricing scheme too ridiculous for mine and many people's budgets)
My AMD 1333mhz (full system+ for less than a grand)makes my Mac look like it's standing still:wink:
So until you smarten up Apple.Ciao...............

 

[menoinjun]

I dont believe that the problem lies in people being able to afford a mac...it think it is in people not knowing that macs are completely compatable with PC's, and that they are actually EASIER to use!! The average consumer is very dumb, and Apple has to overcome that. I think that the free demos of Mac software in the Apple stores are a great service, but they need to do more.

If any prices need to be lowerd...it's the iMacs. I think that creative professionals can shell out the money for a G4 (or G5? ), but the average consumer doesn't want to spend the $1499 for a 700mhz machine. I think that a gig machine should be no more than $999 right now, and Apple has to get in gear to get the prices down on the consumer models.

The only real bargain is the iBook, which I love!! We sell more of those then any other mac at compusa.

-Pete

 

[Sleepy]

I have to agree and say that the pricing is probably the biggest deterent to owning one. We have a pc in our house and I would really like to jump into the mac world. Im looking at a mac computer for pre-production audio and Im beginning to actually price out my options. Pcs are *so much* cheaper. By the time I added ram and a monitor to a g4, it was well over 5k(CAD). This did not include the harddisk recording unit which is about another thousand. This is outrageous to me. I realise that some of you may not feel this way, but it is enough to sway me to the pc side of the equation. Apple needs to smarten up.
If you evaluate from a business perspective as dude had previously done, their approach is downright retarded.
Just my 2cents.

 

[Foocha]

High margins

Apple is very proud of it's high margins, and these are acheived through product differentiation. The enormous overheads carried by Apple in its OS development are offset by the higher margins they are able to make on their hardware sales. If they started to compete fully with Windows PCs on price, they wouldn't be able to sustain their OS development.

It's true that the higher ticket price of a Mac vs a PC is the single greatest obstacle to increasing Mac penetration - but you have to ask yourself how committed Apple are to this goal, vs the goal of differentiating their product offering and maintaining high margins.

In the PC market, it's not true to say that increased volume of sales will offset thinner margins and result in greater profitiablity. Remember that companies like Dell are virtually giving their boxes away right now - it's not a profitable sector to be in right now, and it is therefore not a space that Apple wants to go anywhere near. Apple are not well positioned to enter into a price war with Dell - instead they focus on product differentiation. Think Different!

 

[mymemory]

Is not this discusion too corny?

Apple have a price base on quality. The BMW can produce cheaper cars and have a bigger marke, ask me if the want to reduce their prices, may be quality would be sacrify.

If the poeple wants more computers, be sure apple will know that.

Imposible that Apple share the 50% of the market. PC's can be configured in any way, Macs can not.

You can get a PC with a CD ROM, Floppy, monitor, keyboard, mouse and that is it, and that is what you are gonna pay for a computer terminal.
On the other hand Apple is gonna give you audio ports, firewire conections, video ram, and lots of other thing that you are not going to use for a terminal. The cheapest Mac would be 3 times the price of the simplest PC.
Imagine the amount of money you need to spend if you use iMac if you own a bank with 50 branches at lits.?
Then is why people said Macs are for graphics.
In my company I'm the only one with a Mac, the rest have PC's and they do not need a mac, they use a lot of softwares like visual basic that I guess doesn't exist for macs. The networking market is made for PC's, Apple is adapting to it.

So, if Apple wants a bigger portion of the market, there should be licences for clones and I guess there are not any right now. They did that bot I guess when the so that video some PCI cards works in 4 of 7 manofactures, they were about to loose popularity. And the funny thing too was that the clones were getting as expensive as the Apple made. There is not almost room for an Apple clone. Are you gonna share a 2% of a already 5% market?

 

[Foocha]

As you conclude in your e-mail, cloning did no extend Mac penetration, it just enabled clone manufacturers to Cannibalize Apple's existing customer base. It's not the solution here.

The analogy with BMW is not bad - they invest more in the design, development and component costs and add bigger margins.

Apple needs to take care, however, since the Mac is not a "luxury" computer in the way that BMW is a luxury car. Product differentiation does not necessarily mean a quality differential - it just means that the product is different and therefore need not compete on cost. Since Mac has locked-in vertical sectors like publishing and education, where the cost of migrating to Windows is high, they just need to keep their products different to Windows with special features like iMovie or whatever, and they can get away with their higher prices. It's a balancing act - monetize your user based without exploiting them to the extent that they jump ship - a bit like a drug dealer I guess!

 

[jefhatfield]

re creative professionals

i knew some very highly paid creative professionals in the silicon valley, but due to an extremely high cost of living, not one of them bought a dual G4 with a cinema screen and a gig of RAM

the price, even for them, was too high (but then again, san jose is not the creative professionals top choice)

i would venture to think that type of need would fall to the creative professionals in advetising on madison avenue in new york and in hollywood in los angeles, and of course to the world's best graphics people in london and tokyo...sorry USA, but there is world class talent elsewhere (something many of us americans do not know...i am a kick ass american guitarist and soccor player and when i went to london, i saw what real guitar playing and real soccor was...it was a humbling experience and i realized that there was a lot going on elsewhere outside of the USA...i was just a small town country boy who grew up with john wayne movies)

so back to the topic

there must be something wrong with apple's pricing if san jose people are complaining about the prices, even at a time when money grew on trees in the silicon valley

i understand apple is only one company, and a mid sized one at best in a huge sea of pc companies and giants like hp, ibm, and microsoft (on the software side), so competing with those and thousands of other pc companies would bankrupt apple

i think the consumer stuff should come down a little on the imac side, the ibook is almost cheap enough, the tibook needs to get below two grand on both models, and there should not be a pro dual G4 system over $2500 with 15" monitor

this will eventually happen as is the trend with high tech computer equipment, but it may take two years or more

look at the old prices of apple equipment just a few years ago, things were often over five grand for then mediocre stuff (for a perspective, see http://www.apple-history.com to get an idea...blakespot and arn, i hope this type of recomedation to another site is allowed)

if os x takes off, then i think apple can actually start cutting prices a little on their hardware side, and if their devices really take off, then computer prices can come down even more

...but don't expect macs to ever get as cheap as pcs on any given month this decade (or next five years)

i remember it like yesterday when the cheapest configurable pc desktop for the consumer dipped below one thousand dollars and the press went crazy...it was like some amazing breakthrough in price and technology which would bring computing to all americans (which it didn't, of course)

now we have a $799 dollar imac and no one says how amazing that is because that other company dell can sell you a one gigahertz machine for $600 dollars so the press and public are in awe of that

that $799 dollar imac can do things with graphics and adobe products that most 1998 era graphics workstations for three times the price couldn't achieve (my $4995.00 '97 clone from powercomputing could not even touch the low end imac of today graphics wise and at the time, it handily beat any apple product)

without getting too price centric or too in love with lcd monitors, the $799 dollar imac, for the average user, is a good deal, still, and will give the word processor, e-mailer, and the casual web surfer a good quality computer for the next two to three years and what more can you ask for?

it's just a waiting game and by the time we have a sub-$500 dollar consumer machine, one of the thousands of pc companies will have a $299 dollar desktop with pretty decent capabilities

 

[jefhatfield]

re: cheaper prices two years from now

so i said that two years from now, there should be cheaper prices on apple products, here are my out of the blue suggestions in specific terms (USD)

consumer G4 desktops starting at $599 and topping out at $999.00

consumer G4 laptops starting at $799 and topping out at $1299.00

professional G5 desktops starting at $999.00 and topping out at $1999.00

professional G4 or G5 laptops starting at $1299.00 and topping out at $1999.00

ipod for $249 dollars!

in late-2003, nothing over two thousand dollars, except for servers ans special bundle deals

i hope apple could do that in the next 24 months

 

[Foocha]

Agreed. There's no doubt that in this sector prices go down as performance increases. Apple will watch closely to ensure it follows market trends in terms of pricing, whilst jealously guarding the premium they charge over the PC equivalent.

 

[mischief]

Think on this one.............

1. Apple hasn't actually updated it's official (released) marketshare in 10 years.

2. Apple isn't interested in marketshare, they're interested in exclusivity.

3. They're not competing with PC makers because Personal Computers are no longer their product.

4. Pay greater attention when Steve talks about the Digital Lifestyle concept, THAT's their new product. This will be the next battlefield (have you looked at X box yet?)

5. Watch Airport very carefully.

 

[eyelikeart]

blah....blah....blahhhh

We all know the answers to this question. And, unfortunately, we also know it's not going to change (more than likely anyway).

 

[tomato]

Are any PC makers making money??

Look at the bottomline of the HP's, Compaq's & GAteway's and what do they all have in common??
$$ trouble. They all work against each other and somebody's going to loose...

Apple learned that lesson a few years ago, remember the Motorola StarMac? the Power Computing Power Tower? Apple wisened up and cut off thier license agreements before it was too late... So tell me who benefits from their being excessive competition in the PC market...why it must be the only monopoly out their of course!!

Besides Apple seems to make it's money on hardware and ideas or image now-a-days...

Companies exist to make $$ profits, large companies tend to be uncontrollable over time and forget what made them great...

Spend your $$ money on items that you love and all is well......excluding illegal black market items of course, and when you do the taxes will go to pay off all the corrupt politicians making the world a better place for everyone!!!

Besides no stores will exist to spend your money at after the earth becomes a barren rock anyway, fully and completely exploited, then at the very least you can laugh at your cohorts wasting thier time trying to decontaminate their PC's from the latest virus brought to you by the man with all the cash!!

Aien't it great??

 

[ilikeiBook]

lower prices needed

Apple needs to lower its prices by alot

Compeditive prices would be:

Powermac (full system with monitor)

1Ghz - $999
933 Mhz - $899
800 Mhz - $799

iMac

800Mhz superdrive - $699
700Mhz combo drive - $599
700Mhz cdrw drive - $499

Powerbook

667Mhz - $2199
533Mhz - $1999

iBook

500Mhz cd - $999
500Mhz cdrw - $1199
600Mhz 14" monitor - $1499

 

[capcom1701]

Mac pricing

I just wanted to point out the longevity of the Mac. I purchased a powermac 7300/200 in summer 1997, and I can still use it for industry standard graphics design/animation/digital editing. Sure I'd like to buy a brand new machine, but this one still works... I've got firewire added, memory, processor upgrades, and it works. Rendering can be a bit slow, but what can you do? I have friends who have gone through two or three PC's in the same time span and in the process, they've blown more money than I have, and at no point have they had a computer capable of doing hard core graphics work.
Capcom

 

[arn]

Re: lower prices needed

Originally posted by ilikeiBook
Apple needs to lower its prices by alot

Compeditive prices would be:

Powermac (full system with monitor)

1Ghz - $999
933 Mhz - $899
800 Mhz - $799

iMac

800Mhz superdrive - $699
700Mhz combo drive - $599
700Mhz cdrw drive - $499

Powerbook

667Mhz - $2199
533Mhz - $1999

iBook

500Mhz cd - $999
500Mhz cdrw - $1199
600Mhz 14" monitor - $1499

How would this help anyone if Apple were out of business? (based on these pricings). Of note, a Superdrive costs $480 retail. That means, you think they could sell a 15"LCD, G4 800, GeForce2MX, etc... without an optical drive for $220.

arn

 

[voicegy]

Ya gets what ya pay for

A few reasons already beaten to death on why Apple machines can be a bit on the higher side of cost:

1. Macs last longer.
2. Apple designs and makes their own machines to:
3. work with their own Operating Systems.
4. Apple is a "boutique" computer company.
5. They're the only computer manufacturer that make integrated products. That costs money.
5. They're not interested in making mass cheap machines.
6. And frankly, I'm glad they're not.

And, I don't see the point. Go to Comp USA or what have you and at the end of the row of crappy cheap PeeCee's, place an iMac there at a price that is in line with the rest of the junk. Hey, let's make it even cheaper.

See if they fly out of the stores any faster simply based on the price.

(oh, I know all the above contains a flaw or two, or has come out perhaps a bit awkward, but I really shouldn't have even replied to this post. I mean, "only the elite or very determined" can buy a Mac?! What's that all about? I shouldn't have replied...)

 

[touchsky]

People please do your homework...!

This is going to be short..
Go to Dell. Select the best home desktop they have. They advertise it starting at 1149.00 or something like that. Very impressive. Then start to customize it...add the stuff the the top of the line G4 has.
Up the processor, then add a gig of ram (not the 1.5 the mac has) then add a SuperDrive, 120 gig drive, Audio card, Firewire card and gig ethernet( so sorry that isn't a option). Then update the total your pushing 3500.00 and I wasn't even trying. Now add the retainer for the tech your going to have to pay to keep the piece of crap running and your looking at the market value of a small child.
For all the people out there reading this that are saying..."I can get a ....for ...." Piss off..I used Dell because they are supposed to have great reliablity and are not considered a budget computer.

As far as the market share question..Apple has a larger market share for computers then BMW or Benz has for cars and it isn't like the price for a Mac is like comparing a BMW with a Ford Escort (so sorry..they discontinued those)

 

[j763]

Originally posted by mymemory
Apple have a price base on quality. The BMW can produce cheaper cars and have a bigger marke, ask me if the want to reduce their prices, may be quality would be sacrify.
......
You can get a PC with a CD ROM, Floppy, monitor, keyboard, mouse and that is it, and that is what you are gonna pay for a computer terminal.
On the other hand Apple is gonna give you audio ports, firewire conections, video ram, and lots of other thing that you are not going to use for a terminal...

Well said! Sure, we'd all like to see cheaper macs, but hey, the iMac's still a great deal iMovie, iTunes, iPhoto etc.etc. w/lcd flat screen... compared to a wintel box which you are limited to some internet sailing, word processing and gaming. Wintels are cheap and nasty... with pretty much no features.

 

[Six]

Theres a forum just like this... Why sacrifice quality? Apple just dropped their prices, and they arent bad...

IMHO- You pay for what you get in most cases, but if that were true with apple, we'd be paying thousands more

 

[madamimadam]

Re: People please do your homework...!

Originally posted by touchsky
This is going to be short..
Go to Dell. Select the best home desktop they have. They advertise it starting at 1149.00 or something like that. Very impressive. Then start to customize it...add the stuff the the top of the line G4 has.
Up the processor, then add a gig of ram (not the 1.5 the mac has) then add a SuperDrive, 120 gig drive, Audio card, Firewire card and gig ethernet( so sorry that isn't a option). Then update the total your pushing 3500.00 and I wasn't even trying. Now add the retainer for the tech your going to have to pay to keep the piece of crap running and your looking at the market value of a small child.
For all the people out there reading this that are saying..."I can get a ....for ...." Piss off..I used Dell because they are supposed to have great reliablity and are not considered a budget computer.

As far as the market share question..Apple has a larger market share for computers then BMW or Benz has for cars and it isn't like the price for a Mac is like comparing a BMW with a Ford Escort (so sorry..they discontinued those)

Then consider that Dell's best home desktop is not optimised for creative professionals like the G4s are and start looking at prices for those machines. Then again, anyone who knows anything about buying a PC knows to tell Dell to **** off.

 

[IndyGopher]

My first instinct was that SURELY you price clowns could not POSSIBLY be that stupid, or naive. But then I realized that yes, you probably are. Apple's prices have come down a HUGE degree since the beige days, and frankly, if you're the sort that is going bitch and moan about every nickel, we really do not want you in the mac community. As for needing to be "elite or determined" to afford a Mac, that's really pathetic. What kind of jobs do you people have?? I don't even have a college degree and I don't seem to have too much trouble paying a car payment, a mortgage, all the various and sundry utility bills, and still have 2 new macs less than 8 months old. Must be the money I save by not hanging out in stripper clubs and betting on Nascar. Bugger off, losers.

 

[madamimadam]

Originally posted by IndyGopher
My first instinct was that SURELY you price clowns could not POSSIBLY be that stupid, or naive. But then I realized that yes, you probably are. Apple's prices have come down a HUGE degree since the beige days, and frankly, if you're the sort that is going bitch and moan about every nickel, we really do not want you in the mac community. As for needing to be "elite or determined" to afford a Mac, that's really pathetic. What kind of jobs do you people have?? I don't even have a college degree and I don't seem to have too much trouble paying a car payment, a mortgage, all the various and sundry utility bills, and still have 2 new macs less than 8 months old. Must be the money I save by not hanging out in stripper clubs and betting on Nascar. Bugger off, losers.

Touché

 

[ilikeiBook]

If any prices need to be lowerd...it's the iMacs. I think that creative professionals can shell out the money for a G4 (or G5? ), but the average consumer doesn't want to spend the $1299 for a 700mhz machine. I think that a gig machine should be no more than $999 right now, and Apple has to get in gear to get the prices down on the consumer models.

True, lower iMac prices, and earn more money! I'd like to have the cheapest 700 Mhz LCD iMac to be $649. That would be so sweet!

 

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by ilikeiBook


True, lower iMac prices, and earn more money! I'd like to have the cheapest 700 Mhz LCD iMac to be $649. That would be so sweet!

and jump on job boards around the web and look at your local newspaper...creative professionals seem to get paid less than i think they are worth

so apple should lower pro machine prices, too

i know tons of creative computer types out of work but computer engineers seem more employable and ironically, they usually have to buy the much cheaper pc boxes

 

[MacAztec]

Dude...

Apple doesnt compare with a PC for the quality. Better computer for a greater price smart guys!