Apple Marketshare and 'Sales Guys'

[MorganX]

Re: Apple marketshare doesn't matter. You shouldn't care.

Originally posted by spullara
Read my rant about this very question:

http://homepage.mac.com/spullara/rants/

Sam

I agree that Apple's market share in Personal Computers doesn't matter. Mainly for two reasons:

1) 100x more young PC users, tomorrow's analysts and programmers prefer the modded case shown to sleek industrial design. As many users like building their own as there are Mac users. So they will always have limited market share without drastic changes which cater to the dominant market. This market also could care-less about Steve's turtleneck. So I don't see a change in this area coming any time soon.

2) Apple is about the proliferation and profit of, Apple. The tech industry would not support an Apple monopoly of a large portion of the market. There's no trickle-down with Apple.

Take the iPod, there's Apple, and now an Apple manuactured HP model with pricing restrictions. Now, take Portable Media Centers. There's already Viewsonic, iRiver, Creative, Samsung. They can all create their own value-added models and compete, for profit. PCs are the same.

Still, the two single most important acts after the creation of the original Apple by Woz and his "salesman" friend Jobs, was IBM creating the PC from non-proprietary components and the day Bill Gates "licensed" DOS to IBM. That created the industry we know today. And it has employed and enriched countless millions, not just Apple shareholders.

Apple will never have a dominant market share in personal computers again. They would have to completely change their business model and I don't think that will ever happen. As long as Apple is profitable, I don't think it is even desirable.

Something will have to be done though. With PCI Express (this fall) and Windows Media Center changing the form-factor of PCs and with the imminent arrival Portable Media Centers, Apple is going to have to fight to keep their niche pretty soon and to keep iPod relevant. With Apple, your eggs are always in one basket.

 

[rdowns]

Originally posted by MacQuest
Yeah. "Only" 74 stores were opened in the past "only" 2.5 years, during a horrible economy that is just know starting to improve. On a related note [on the other end of the spectrum, but during the same time 03.18.03]:

"Gateway cuts jobs, closes stores

Poway-based PC maker Gateway Inc. says it's eliminating the jobs of 1,900 people and closing 80 of its retail stores [29%]."

That's just one example of how Apple manages to grow while others diminish.


QUOTE]Originally posted by rdowns
To reach the masses, Apple will need to at least triple that number which would probably kill their profitability.

Nah. Apple clearly stated when they launched their retail initiative that they were going to open 100 Apple stores. That number combined with CompUSA's Apple Shops [224 stores nationwide and now staff Apple employees], MicroCenter, Fry's Electronics, and everyone else including BestBuy [FutureShop in Canada] will be enough to increase Apple's presence for the time being IMO.


QUOTE]Originally posted by rdowns
I don't have any hard numbers but I'd bet that much of America buys PCs at Best Buy, Circuit City and the other large national and regional electronics stores.[/QUOTE]

Nope. As more people take their computers more seriously, they want to talk to actual computer knowledgeable staff, not some inexperienced, part-time high school kid who's just killing time to make a paycheck and happens to be working at a home appliance/electronics store. That's why CompUSA is required to staff Apple employees in their Apple Shops instead of generic windows only employees.




True to an extent, but largely depends on what is being sold. KNOWLEDGEABLE STAFF and PROPER REPRESENTATION is COMPUTER retailing 101.

QUOTE]Originally posted by rdowns
Switchers don't buy from web sites, they want to tough and try out a Mac before comitting. [/QUOTE]

True. That's why every Apple Store opening has been met with huge crowds of just as many switchers as existing Mac users.

Paraphraing a comment by Steve Jobs recently, "every market that Apple has gone into, it maintains over 90% marketshare dominance".

Apple has only aggressively gone after the consumer market in the past 2.5 years, specifically with the iApps and the Apple Stores. I told people back then [mid 2001] not to expect any major marketshare increase until approx. 5 years from then, in '06] .

If you don't think that things are changing, then you will have to wait and see.

I, on the other hand, know otherwise. [/QUOTE]

You make very good arguments to my points. I still maintain that Apple needs more retail presence and 100 Apple stores and CompUSA's are not enough. No Fry's here in the NY area and the MicroCenter on Long Island is pathetic. They have a big room in the back of the store that is dirty and filled with outdated Apple product (sans CPUs) like ImageWriter II ribbons, ADB keyboards, old software and books etc. It is disgraceful. Some Apple rep should visit this place and condemn it.

Sure, people want to talk to knowledgabe staff but the masses still shop at big box discounters. That is why I maintain Apple needs shelf space in these stores. Maybe in addition to stand alone Apple Stores, Apple should lease space in these big box stores and run them like they do their own stores.

Apple's 90% share in its markets, that's fantastic but these are niches and haven't helped them grow market share.

Look, I love Apple as much as anyone but I'm not blinded by what I believe are missteps in growing. The agressiveness shown with the iPod should be done in the consumer market. Do a damn commercial showing a family using iPhoto and iMovie, working on Office files, show how good the Mail junk mail filter is, debunking the myths too many still have about Apple.

Rant off

 

[MacQuest]

Originally posted by rdowns
Do a damn commercial showing a family using iPhoto and iMovie, working on Office files, show how good the Mail junk mail filter is, debunking the myths too many still have about Apple.

Agreed. Like I said before, the silence is killing me too. I know that Apple is aware of this and am sure that they will address it sooner or later [hopefully sooner].

I was just saying that things are drastically changing, despite a lack of expensive advertising, instead by simple and cheap word of mouth advertising. It's definately working, but unfortunately it is only being witnessed by people who are on the "frontline" of this war, like the retail sales floors or at the negotiation tables with company executives.

I hope that Apple doesn't wait too long to jump on it's own "swell" of opportunity, because there is definately a huge wave building up on the horizon.

 

[MacQuest]

Re: Re: Re: .3 cents

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
That sure sounds as if Jobs is claiming the monopoly is broken.

OMFG!!! In that exerpt he is referring to Apple itself [in the late 80's - early 90's] when it was being mismanaged and monopolistic/niche-ish. He is stating that Apple's "monopoly", while being run by "sales guys", ended when MS released windows 95 because they were focusing on profit instead of marketshare.

Did you even read the article?!
"Hmm, look who's running Microsoft now," he [Steve jobs] says, referring to former Procter & Gamble marketer Steve Ballmer. "A sales guy!" The smile gets broader. "I wonder ..." he says.

He's clearly commenting on MS's current position as a monopoly and that he feels that it is going down the same path that Apple did over a decade ago.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Where are you getting your numbers?

Which part of "and that's just me" did you not understand? Those are MY numbers.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
I've seen plenty of numbers being spit out but no hard facts on how many new customers are switching.

We're not too concerned with whether or not every individual who feels that they should know, knows. These numbers are revealed on a need to know basis. I need to know, therefore I do. You want to know, therefore you don't.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
And as a side note 2-5 customers per day won't sustain apple. Apple needs a few HUNDRED per day.

I went on to say that MY personal numbers [2-5 per day] need to be multiplied by the thousands of CompUSA Apple Specialists, Apple Store employees, and so on. I think that even you can figure out that this equates to the "few HUNDRED per day" that you feel is needed and that I know is being fulfilled.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
As beautiful as the VT cluster is it does not make a damn bit of diff to the average consumer...

Thank you Captain Obvious.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
As beautiful as the VT cluster is it does not make a damn bit of diff... for businesses who need workstations not servers.

Every business and it's exec's, employee's, etc., would like to believe that they will be bigger tomorrow than it is today. Big Mac, aka "X", represents how far any given business can grow for a minimal amount of money when compared to the cost of the world's top 2 supercomputers.

Proportionally, of course this may not be relevant. Even the smallest business likes to know that it is going to invest into a long term SOLUTION, rather than just making random purchases, that has room to grow.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
The average desktop in the work world doesn't need a whole heck of alot of horsepower.

Agreed. However xServe/xRaid are going after the high end server market. It's nice to know that a small business can buy into this product line as well.

Volume economics worked for ms in the software market, let's see what happens to the corporate/enterprise market while Apple provides a low cost, high quality solution as opposed to the overpriced, low quality solutions found in a windows server/workstation problem... I mean, "solution".

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
My company is running 4 year old Dells that run perfectly fine. (As soon as I upgraded them above 128MB of RAM that is.)

Good for you. Of no consequence however to Mr. or Mrs. business owner who has had the opportunity to review their budgets over the past few years, only to find that they have had an absurd amount of downtime and spent an even more absurd amount of money in maintenance, network admin. and IT costs.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
I'll hold out a bit of hope that you aren't BSing me but frankly a lot of people use the NDA as an excuse.

I'm not, I promise. Unfortunately that's all I can offer because the NDA is more than a written agreement. It's a moral gauge. Remember, a key to winning a war is the element of surprise. I want people within the Mac community and in these forums to know that things are changing. I don't want the people who could care less to suspect a thing.

The Art of War: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
People are now using market share numbers of .xx% when you have to focus on such a thing that smells like desperation.

Apple hasn't been "desperate" since '97. They certainly aren't now with $5 billion on hand, zero long term debt, and a bunch of innovative hardware and software products.

That licensing deal with HP won't hurt any either. I say that we'll see another major wintel manufacturer jump on that same bandwagon in the next 6-12 months, after HP rolls out their deal in June.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
When someone can claim that Apple's market share has jumped from x% to y% with some hard data backing that claim up I will believe.

Again, if you needed to know, you would. If you just want to know, you'll have to wait.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
You mean like the [bunch of Mac related issues]...

Ok, let's get this straight. We are talking proportianally here. Example: I have always found it amusing when a Switcher asked me why Macs are "crashproof", and this was prior to OS X. I found that Macs had gotten that reputation only because, even with it's problems, OS 9 crashed so much less than windows that people considered Macs to actually be crashproof.

In relation to your list of Mac issues, isn't nice to know that you can fit them all in a small paragraph? And that there is one company to account for these issues.

Can you imagine the enormity of a list of known issues that could be gathered for all the different windows OS's, and then add to that a list of known issues for all the different hardware manufacturers with all their different configurations?

It's this lack of quality control between the two most important parts of a computer, the hardware and the OS, that plagues windows computers.

Yes, Apple has it's QC problems like any other company in any industry, but when compared to wintels, their damn near perfect.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
As for your comment on Jaguar. Panther was a .x release.

Okay, I'm gonna have to ask you to remove your head from your a$$ at this time and "Just Say No" to drugs.

Panther was a .x release? Yes it is. Panther 10.3. Not 10.3.x If you're trying to tell me that Panther is only a "point" release, or update, and not an upgrade, then your sadly mistaken.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
It wasn't a total revamp of the OS from the ground up like OS X.0 was.

True, OS X.0 was the first major revamp to the Mac OS in 17 years [since 1984]. No, Panther isn't as ground breaking, nor will any 10.x release be [I hope Apple proves me wrong].

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
I've read more then a few posts and articles stating that 10.2 is what 10.0 should have been from the beginning.

That's a somewhat true, but very weak argument that can be used for any 1st generation product when compared to a later revision or generation of that same product. "Gee, windows '95 revision A is what windows '95 revision B should have been." Or, "windows '98 second edition is what windows '98 first edition should have been."

...next...

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
The main theme that seems to permeate almost all of these posts/articles was that 10.0 had “potential”.

Yeah it did, and still does. As proven in 10.1, 10.2, 10.3...

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
That potential is finally starting to be realized in 10.3.

Although 10.3 is definately worth the upgrade price, I see it's release being overshadowed by the G5.

You may want to do some research and find out how many formerly windows only hardware manufacturers and software developers jumped on the OS X bandwagon after August 24th, 2002 with the release of 10.2 Jaguar. Much more impressive.

That's why I keep saying that I've watched the number of Switchers increase dramatically in the past 1.5 years. It had already begun "snowballing" prior to 10.2 Jaguar. It's "avalanched" ever since.

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
The ease of use and reliability reasons for using a Mac could be drastically diminished in the coming years.

[sarcasm] Yeah. I'm afraid that Apple is going to get too comfortable and stop innovating so that when ms's longhorn [which may be as good as OS 10.0, 5-6 years later of course] is released it will overshadow all of Apple's accomplishments up to Panther 10.3, which, again, is when Apple stopped innovating. [/sarcasm]