Apple Marketshare and 'Sales Guys'

[junior]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's Market Share, stupid. No, profits. No, Market Share.

Originally posted by DGFan
How convenient that you left out the next part of my post.



Did you not read that far? Something tells me it would be more constructive to read the post as a whole instead of picking on piece and responding to it.

See, the difference between a $50k Mercedes and a $20k Honda or Ford was too much. So Mercedes has worked its way into the sub-$30k market. They are still a premium brand but at least they have offerings in the same price-range now. Apple isn't in the same price-range yet for the consumer desktop.

In that case, you're contradicting yourself. What you describe Mercedes as doing is exactly what Apple has done with eMacs, and not too far off, the cheaper one of the iMacs.
I'm sorry I didn't finish reading your post, but the fact that you said that the BMW/Mercedes analogy made you laugh and started arguing against it, yet your description of those companies matching exactly that of Apple made me completely disregard the rest of your point, which, after reading now, was as worthless as I had imagined. Honestly, think about it.

 

[winmacguy]

Originally posted by Trekkie
Speaking as someone whos daily income is affected by Intel Server sales and Intel systems in general.

Windows XP and Windows 2003 are not the driving marketing force (at least in 2003) that say Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 were.

People are not rushing to upgrade to Windows 2003. They're just now getting around to Windows 2000.

What drives our market right now is Linux and it's adoption. lots of people buying systems to kick the tires, not near as many doing that for Windows.

From our perspective as an Intel server provider Microsoft has become complacent and was expecting to 'ride the wave' of upgrades to 2k3 - and that didn't happen. Same can be said about Office 2k3 or whatever it's called. The 'versionitis' that people used to suffer in the MS world has worn off.

I think the same thing is going to be happening down here in NZ from this year onwards as companies and corporates start to upgrade and seek to replace their IT systems. A lot of them are going to be looking at ALL their options in terms of price and licensing agreements and many wont necessarily be replaceing their Windows systems with newer Windows systems.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Originally posted by DGFan
You do realize that they are opening up Apple stores in some places, right? And that they are trying out a program in some Best Buy stores (before deciding whether to expand it), right?

this a start. they have to have the product so the consumer can see it,touch it and get otherthings for it. keep this stuff up and clean up those so called consumer models i mean really how many millions of monitors are outhere that still work fine. Think different on that consumer line Apple.

 

[Selecter]

Windows will have to be in it's present form until 2006 (!) before the next gen Windows appears. Exactly how out of date will Windows XP be in 3 years? Where will Apple be in that time?

Unless they (MS) can graft something onto Win XP to extend it a bit, even if nothing more than fancy eye candy, they are going to be far behind OS X.

Panther is so good now. Imagine 10.5.

I use both platforms but I dont see anything coming up for Wintel but stagnation.

 

[blueBomber]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's Market Share, stupid. No, profits. No, Market Share.

Originally posted by takao
.... my athlon xp (with twice the HD, 1GB RAM , Geforce Ti 4200: a_lot_ faster than those emac graphics, 6 usb 2.0, sony cd writer,)..paid 850...nearly 2 years ago... sure without a monitor but i get a new monitor for free every 2 years ...(pretty decent compaqs the last time)

yeah, but does it run osX?

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by reyesmac
Back when the clones where sold and Steve was out of the picture, Mac compatibles sold from $1,500 to $4,000 give or take a few hundred. That is not much different than how we have it today. How come? Would you buy a PC at late 90's prices? If they have not figured out how to make a cheaper system by now that means they are not looking to make one, period. They are trying to find a different way of selling more than the competition.
If Apple is charging high end PC prices on their lowest end systems, those systems need to offer high end PC hardware features, not just a bunch of free iApps. But they can't because it would make Apples high end machines look less powerful. I really don't know what Apple can do to gain market share if they keep these price/power gaps between their lines. They should offer the same speed all around in different upgradable/design configurations.

How is $799 for an eMac a hi-end PC price? Dell has lower-end computers that sell for less than eMacs, but their hi-end computers, computers that are comparible to the top end G5, sell at a comparible cost to the dual 2gig G5.

If you only look at hardware specs alone Apple is not going to ever be the cheapest (speaking in generalities). Heck, Gateway ran itself into the ground by getting into a "low-ball" war w/Dell. But if you look at the complete computer you are buying, hardware + software that's a different story. The "stock" software bunlde on an "off the shelf" Mac is miles ahead of what you'll get on an off the shelf PC. But clock speed, RAM, and HDD all get shoved in consumers face because they are easily digestable numbers. I mean, the faster the CPU speed, the more RAM, and the bigger the HDD the better the computer is right?

That being said, Apple does need to overhaul its consumer and portable machines (the iMac especially)


Lethal

 

[MacQuest]

Re: I Don't Get It

Originally posted by mhouse
...That store sells Macs all day everyday. Really. At a pace that is pretty amazing and that can't possibly be explained by existing Mac users simply upgrading....

BINGO!!!

It's interesting to me that lots of people don't think that the "Switch" ad campaign of '02 was effective. Not only was it effective then, it's been picking up steam at a steady pace ever since.

For the past year and a half I've witnessed the switch process get at least 50% easier. Meaning that the time that it took someone to make the decision to switch back then [2-4 hours if made that same day, now down to under 2 hours, or 2-3 visits down to 1st visit/same day decisions] is significantly reduced because lots of these people have seen other people that they know switch recently, or their curious why the iMac was named Editor's Choice in PC Magazine ['02], or they've read the Consumer Reports articles showing Apple to be far superior than the top ranked Windows computer manufacturer [Dell], or they've finally had the chance to speak to a Mac knowledgeable person [Apple Specialist] at CompUSA, or even had an Apple Store open up locally.

Whatever the reason, switching has, and continues to occur.

I witness an average of [at least] 3 former Windows computer customers switch, DAILY!. That's just me. Multiply that by [at least] the number of CompUSA Apple Specialists, Apple Store Mac Specialists, and anyone else who's in this mix and the numbers are pretty staggering. True, the numbers aren't enough [yet] to show a spike in increased marketshare, but they're steadily increasing.

This isn't a race folks, it's a marathon. Apple will go the distance.

 

[ionas]

u are right

apple needs to refresh iMac, eMac, iBook and PowerBook.

the G5 - even if I want to see updates, is a nice machine.

 

[ogminlo]

Originally posted by wilco
The phrase you're thinking of is "long in the tooth."

No, he meant long in the horn. In reference to the code name for the next revision of Windows, Longhorn. You got the jist though, it was meant to be a play on long in the tooth.

 

[stingerman]

Re: Market Share

Originally posted by El Tritoma
Some companies buy hundreds or more Wintel PCs at a time to be used as barely more than dumb terminals. It takes a lot of people going into a store buying a Mac one at a time to equal this. You never see these purchases because they just show up at the loading dock of the company. When these cheap computers start to fail they buy more new ones. As long as they don't fail too much faster than the depreciation schedule no one cares too much.

Also, there "per unit" market share and "$" market share. I think the value most often quoted is "per unit" so that a single $500 el cheapo counts the same as a dual 2GHz G5.

Lumping everything called "a computer" into the same market is patently stupid. A lot of these are used as little more than smart typewriters and calculators. There is office equipment and there are computers. Apple doesn't sell much office equipment.

What you are saying is so obvious, nobody gets it. Apple makes a profit selling computers. They do NOT take a loss selling commodity PCs like the other 9 out of 10 PC makers.

 

[xStep]

Originally posted by Tulse
It's a bit ironic that Jobs speaks so disparagingly of "protecting turf" when one of the earliest acts he took on his return as CEO was to kill the Mac OS clones. I think that was a smart move on his part, but there's no doubt that it was about protecting turf, and not innovation (some of the fastest machines of that era weren't made by Apple).

It had little to do with turf. Jobs argued that Apple simply was losing too much money. It was an economic decision. The clones were eating away at Apples profits. Remember, most of Apples sales come from their hardware.

Personally I was sad to see the clones disappear. My brothers clone has served him well for years in the music production business. They were quality machines.

 

[reyesmac]

People say the eMac is a good deal at $799. Well, how much better a deal would it be if it didn't have a monitor and was as expandable as a powermac in a cheap but nice looking box? Powermac power from two years ago at around $500. THAT would be a good deal and cheap enough for people to stop complaining. Especially since you would be able to run all software that runs on the mac, including games. Why doesn't Apple come out with that? It just might, but until the G5 came out, something like this would have shown just how overpriced the powermacs were/are.

Apple can make cheaper systems, it just isn't ready to do so yet. Even if they did I would still get the more expensive systems, but I would recommend the cheap ones for people like my mom or novices. Heck, I would even help her pay for it if not buy it outright for her.

 

[DGFan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's Market Share, stupid. No, profits. No, Market Share.

Originally posted by junior
In that case, you're contradicting yourself. What you describe Mercedes as doing is exactly what Apple has done with eMacs, and not too far off, the cheaper one of the iMacs.
I'm sorry I didn't finish reading your post, but the fact that you said that the BMW/Mercedes analogy made you laugh and started arguing against it, yet your description of those companies matching exactly that of Apple made me completely disregard the rest of your point, which, after reading now, was as worthless as I had imagined. Honestly, think about it.

True, the eMacs fill that role to an extent. But the problem is that most people who are looking for a budget computer are *gasp* trying to save money. And one way to save money is to reuse a monitor that still works (monitors have a productive life much longer than a computer typically does). So Apple is offering a low-end product that ignores the buying habits of a significant portion of the consumers in that market.

And this is where the analogy is less useful. People tend to replace whole cars at once. They don't buy a new Ford and reuse the tires from their old car.

What I pointed out in another post is just how nice a useful computer you can get for so much cheaper from a good PC manufacturer. Apple is still the $50k Mercedes. Why? Because PCs have gotten that cheap. That's why.

A large part of it is a marketing game. Apple can say "starting at $799" but other companies can say "starting at $299". Simply by removing the monitor and making it an option Apple can lower their perceived starting price.

It's obvious if you think about it (you seem to be still waiting...)

 

[DGFan]

Originally posted by xStep
It had little to do with turf. Jobs argued that Apple simply was losing too much money. It was an economic decision. The clones were eating away at Apples profits. Remember, most of Apples sales come from their hardware.

Personally I was sad to see the clones disappear. My brothers clone has served him well for years in the music production business. They were quality machines.

If it makes you feel any better, Apple is certainly positioning itself to be able to survive with clones in the future. A lot more of their revenue and profits come from software and peripherals (iPod). But it will take many years of steady growth of both the platform and the software sales to make clones at all viable.

 

[junior]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's Market Share, stupid. No, profits. No, Market Share.

Originally posted by DGFan
True, the eMacs fill that role to an extent. But the problem is that most people who are looking for a budget computer are *gasp* trying to save money. And one way to save money is to reuse a monitor that still works (monitors have a productive life much longer than a computer typically does). So Apple is offering a low-end product that ignores the buying habits of a significant portion of the consumers in that market.

And this is where the analogy is less useful. People tend to replace whole cars at once. They don't buy a new Ford and reuse the tires from their old car.

What I pointed out in another post is just how nice a useful computer you can get for so much cheaper from a good PC manufacturer. Apple is still the $50k Mercedes. Why? Because PCs have gotten that cheap. That's why.

A large part of it is a marketing game. Apple can say "starting at $799" but other companies can say "starting at $299". Simply by removing the monitor and making it an option Apple can lower their perceived starting price.

It's obvious if you think about it (you seem to be still waiting...)

Again, the point is that Apple doesn't want to lower the perceived starting price as low as the low end PC, whether it be with a monitor or not, just like the Mercedes and BMWs don't want to, as I had explained previously.
You say most people who are buying a budget PC are there to *gasp* save money. Well, what about those that buy the cheap cars that are priced well below the cheap BMW range? Don't they want to save money as well? Apple stuck the monitors on their consumer lines just so they have the excuse to charge higher prices than PCs. And they want to keep it that way.
As you say, a large part of it is a marketing game indeed. Just like it is for those car manufacturers to not come out with $10k cars.
Think about it .

 

[ogminlo]

Re: So what do I buy?

Originally posted by synp
- In late 2004 or in 2005 I'll probably want a new computer. What should I buy? The 20" iMac looks like what I'm looking for, but will it be fast enough to justify replacing my dual? The resolution will still be less than I'm used to, so why replace the screen that works so well? The low-end PM would probably still be cheaper, althogh I need neither the extra speed nor the expandability.
If I buy the iMac, 3 years later I would want to replace the computer, but have to spring for a new screen too?

I for one will never, ever buy another computer with less than two processors in it. Therefore, unless Apple starts going DP in their consumer machines (unlikely- gotta keep those costs down), I will be a Power Mac man henceforth!

And buying anything with a G4 in it? No thanks. The difference between the G4 and the G5 is so huge... Why people are clawing for a 1.42GHz G4 PowerBook is beyond me... The G4 is dead, man!

I want a Dual 65nm G5 PB! Liquid cooled! HD display in the 17" FF!

Ah, I can dream...

 

[DGFan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's Market Share, stupid. No, profits. No, Market Share

Originally posted by junior
Again, the point is that Apple doesn't want to lower the perceived starting price as low as the low end PC, whether it be with a monitor or not, just like the Mercedes and BMWs don't want to, as I had explained previously.
You say most people who are buying a budget PC are there to *gasp* save money. Well, what about those that buy the cheap cars that are priced well below the cheap BMW range? Don't they want to save money as well? Apple stuck the monitors on their consumer lines just so they have the excuse to charge higher prices than PCs. And they want to keep it that way.
As you say, a large part of it is a marketing game indeed. Just like it is for those car manufacturers to not come out with $10k cars.
Think about it .

So the starting price for PCs is $299 and the starting price for a Mac is $599. Where's the problem? You keep ignoring the fact that I openly advocated Apple keeping their price point above their competitors. But Apple isn't even close right now.

And if you don't believe me perhaps you will believe Apple CFO Fred Anderson:

On the lower end of Apple's desktop spectrum, Anderson said that the 29% drop in sales for the iMac product was because the computer's price of $1,299 remains above the "sweet spot" of under $1,000 for other brands.

http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/040114/1914001478_3.html

Apple will be doing something about it. I think it's just a matter of when.

 

[areyouwishing]

A couple of thoughts for the people "arguing."

i see a lot of arguing about the wintel platform being cheaper than the mac platform, this predicament is going to be around for a while. PC's are cheaper because they make more of them, the high the quantity the lower per unit cost...this is not quantum physics. This is why buying stuff at costco is cheaper than the grocery store.

The reason why most people don't switch to the Mac platform now is the "good enough" syndrome and its the same reason every isn't upgrading from win98 to XP or Server 2000 to 2003. ilife BLOWS the PC competition out of the water, XP is a much more stable os than 95/98/me but people can't really justify everything in their mind because their current setup is "good enough."

The battle nowadays is 50/50 between cost and familiarity, where as in the mid/early 90's it was HEAVILY based on cost because most people were making their first computer purchasing decisions and those people didn't know the difference. But now those people who bought a PC the first time around are familiar with that platform, so they will always lean towards that brand.

Jobs is RIGHT on with most of his statements.

 

[wilco]

Originally posted by ogminlo
No, he meant long in the horn. In reference to the code name for the next revision of Windows, Longhorn. You got the jist though, it was meant to be a play on long in the tooth.

I'm aware of Longhorn. I got the "play on".

"Long in the horn" doesn't make sense.

 

[the_dalex]

Wow, this has turned into an interesting thread.

Apple offers a good sub-$1000 machine in the eMac. I use one at work, and am typing on it now. It's 700Mhz, with 256MB of Ram and a 40GB hard drive, and is one of the first models released. It runs very well, but does slow down when I run Classic, Filemaker, Illustrator, and the Office programs all at once, but that's to be expected. I firmly believe this machine compares directly to your basic PC, but it is an all-in-one unit, making it easier to set up and with a smaller overall footprint. Does your basic PC have firewire standard?

You can now buy a 1Ghz G4 machine with a combodrive for $799 retail, toss in some cheap RAM and you have a nice system, very clean (no excess wires), nice-looking and easy to use, with a software bundle that blows away any PC offerings.

I personally believe that Apple has low-cost offerings comparable to the PC world, considering what you can do with it out of the box, and its ease-of-use. The problem isn't price, it's awareness and perception. Making the system $200 cheaper is really not going to increase sales volume to where the system is profitable. Dell is not making money by selling a desktop system cheap, they are buying marketshare. Apple doesn't buy marketshare, they prefer to earn it in a way that keeps the accountants and stockholders happy, while ensuring that there is still an Apple computer company in ten years.

Quit whining and go buy the PC, if price is your most important specification. Or, be fair and go complain to BMW that they don't sell a sub-$15,000 car like so many other companies.

 

[junior]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's Market Share, stupid. No, profits. No, Market S

Originally posted by DGFan
So the starting price for PCs is $299 and the starting price for a Mac is $599. Where's the problem? You keep ignoring the fact that I openly advocated Apple keeping their price point above their competitors. But Apple isn't even close right now.

And if you don't believe me perhaps you will believe Apple CFO Fred Anderson:



http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/040114/1914001478_3.html

Apple will be doing something about it. I think it's just a matter of when.

Yes!!! Finally he admits it!!
Not once did I say what Apple could, or should be doing at this time, but in fact what they actually ARE doing. And what they actually are doing, and have been doing was very much comparable to the likes of BMW. That is what you were arguing about, yet having lost the argument, you've changed the subject to what you feel Apple should be doing, when in fact you know damn well it's got nothing to do with the argument.
Let me quote your last couple of lines again:

Apple will be doing something about it. I think it's just a matter of when.

Thank you very much.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

what people keep missing is out of new computers sold apple went from 3.5 to 3.2. we arent concerned about who where or why the fact of the matter is apples sales was this portion of the pie of all new machines sold. so though sales of all pc's went up 10% this year apples portion of this pie is getting smaller.
As DGfan pointed out Imac sales declined 29%. when apple counts Imac they are counting Imac/Emac together. another game trying to protect Imac. Instead of debating numbers we should be asking why are people buying less and less Imacs. I mean Imac/Emac. Apple needs to address this with a new consumer line and make up.

 

[benpatient]

you're forgetting something in your comparison of cars to computers:

A 2000 dollar iMac comes with an underpowered 3 year old graphics card, at "top of the line" hard drive from 1999, RAM from before that, and zero future potential.

A 500 dollar PC can easily DOUBLE all those numbers, mostly with the SAME components (same hard drives, same RAM, same graphics card), minus the monitor. I happen to have 2 extra monitors just sitting around waiting for something to do.

Apple doesn't need to work on their "perceived value" they need to work on their actual value. There is no reason why they couldn't ship with the amount of memory you actually need to run OS X. There's no reason why the Dual G5's 9600 pro would come with 1/2 the memory of the 120 dollar PC version of that card.

Where the analogy falls apart is when you compare the actual product. A Mercedes isn't just priced higher than a Kia Rio, it is a great deal more car. They still make a profit, but it isn't like they are taking an outdated machine—a Kia, or the G4, the RAM, the HDD, the mobo bus speeds—and slapping on a really great transmission (the shell, monitor, and OS X). No, they are making a no-compromises vehicle. The Mac is FULL of compromises.

You guys all talk about how apple innovates and the PCs follow. Why then did it take them so long to bring out SATA? Pixel Shading? DDR? USB 2.0? A FREAKING TWO BUTTON MOUSE?!?

I'm sorry, I just got really ticked when i got the dual 2.0 and it came with a POS keyboard and one button mouse. I had to go get a real set.

All i hear on this site is defense for apple's heavyhanded price-controlling and their love of the dollar. The consumer is supposed to be in charge!

Honestly, i get really sick of this elitist crap from them. Nobody else forces distributors to say within 5 dollars of MSRP. Nobody else waits until the day a product is "available" for sale before they announce it. Nobody else acts like they are God's gift to the computer world. I use these machines as part of my business. indeed, it relies on them. I don't care about apple wanting to build suspense over their next computer. i don't care what the next mp3 player is going to be or how much it is going to cost. I want to know right now what my options are going to be in 3 months when we have another purchase budgeted so that i can plan the production schedule accordingly. I can't sit on my butt and wait for apple to tell me things that they've known for 6 months and kept quiet just for "effect."

the community plays into their hands willingly. You wait on this site and on the apple website and think secret and all these places, just dying to see what's new, what's next, when they will bump the processor speed for the first time since LAST SUMMER. If their customers didn't take so much [self-edit] stuff from them, then they would stop dishing it out. They would be forced to treat their buyers with respect.

Can you imagine if you were a college, spending once-every-4 years funding on new graphics lab computers, and you figured out that you could get 30 G5 1.8 single processor computers and come 3rd party displays and still have enough money to buy a nice couple of scanners/printers for the lab, and you made your order for all of that stuff, and then apple "surprised" everyone with the dual 1.8s at the same price line? It's not supposed to be the lottery. it's business, and screwing your clients in the name of higher profits is BAD business.

 

[junior]

Originally posted by benpatient
you're forgetting something in your comparison of cars to computers:

A 2000 dollar iMac comes with an underpowered 3 year old graphics card, at "top of the line" hard drive from 1999, RAM from before that, and zero future potential.

A 500 dollar PC can easily DOUBLE all those numbers, mostly with the SAME components (same hard drives, same RAM, same graphics card), minus the monitor. I happen to have 2 extra monitors just sitting around waiting for something to do.

Apple doesn't need to work on their "perceived value" they need to work on their actual value. There is no reason why they couldn't ship with the amount of memory you actually need to run OS X. There's no reason why the Dual G5's 9600 pro would come with 1/2 the memory of the 120 dollar PC version of that card.

Where the analogy falls apart is when you compare the actual product. A Mercedes isn't just priced higher than a Kia Rio, it is a great deal more car. They still make a profit, but it isn't like they are taking an outdated machine—a Kia, or the G4, the RAM, the HDD, the mobo bus speeds—and slapping on a really great transmission (the shell, monitor, and OS X). No, they are making a no-compromises vehicle. The Mac is FULL of compromises.

You guys all talk about how apple innovates and the PCs follow. Why then did it take them so long to bring out SATA? Pixel Shading? DDR? USB 2.0? A FREAKING TWO BUTTON MOUSE?!?

I'm sorry, I just got really ticked when i got the dual 2.0 and it came with a POS keyboard and one button mouse. I had to go get a real set.

All i hear on this site is defense for apple's heavyhanded price-controlling and their love of the dollar. The consumer is supposed to be in charge!

Honestly, i get really sick of this elitist crap from them. Nobody else forces distributors to say within 5 dollars of MSRP. Nobody else waits until the day a product is "available" for sale before they announce it. Nobody else acts like they are God's gift to the computer world. I use these machines as part of my business. indeed, it relies on them. I don't care about apple wanting to build suspense over their next computer. i don't care what the next mp3 player is going to be or how much it is going to cost. I want to know right now what my options are going to be in 3 months when we have another purchase budgeted so that i can plan the production schedule accordingly. I can't sit on my butt and wait for apple to tell me things that they've known for 6 months and kept quiet just for "effect."

the community plays into their hands willingly. You wait on this site and on the apple website and think secret and all these places, just dying to see what's new, what's next, when they will bump the processor speed for the first time since LAST SUMMER. If their customers didn't take so much [self-edit] stuff from them, then they would stop dishing it out. They would be forced to treat their buyers with respect.

Can you imagine if you were a college, spending once-every-4 years funding on new graphics lab computers, and you figured out that you could get 30 G5 1.8 single processor computers and come 3rd party displays and still have enough money to buy a nice couple of scanners/printers for the lab, and you made your order for all of that stuff, and then apple "surprised" everyone with the dual 1.8s at the same price line? It's not supposed to be the lottery. it's business, and screwing your clients in the name of higher profits is BAD business.

Actually, since Daimler Chrysler basically took over Mercedes, they've been forced to really cut down on all sorts of costs to maximize profits, such as different components and little parts (even screws for eg), and since then, their quality has gone right down. They've actually been spending more money fixing cars sent back because of this than the money they'd saved on cost-cutting.
Anyway, point being that Mercedes ain't the company you make them out to be, and yes, they too are making lots of compromise, and over charging while they're at it. But it works.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

benpatient is right and he forgot to mention a old and slow cpu. 1.25 G4 now we get to hear from those that say they dont need a fast cpu and yada yada yada.