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Apple's US Market Share Slips in 1Q 2009
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Dell has competition in their market, and has been forced to cut prices to unbelievable low margins.
Apple has little competition in the higher end as well as iPod, iPhone, and iTunes revenue coming in.
Macs are not even Apples cash cow.
Comparing Dell to Apple is harder then you think, Apple can afford to take a hit on mac sales.
Now are you going to take heed at us apple and listen when across the board glossy displays have scared people away and the hyper reflective glassy ones are having people running after buying last years tec for matte or abandoning you altogether?????!???????????????
Meh, it's just classic Apple apologism at its finest. When Apple's market share goes up, it's "wohoo, go Apple! Keep pushing!". When it goes down it's "oh but didn't you know? Apple doesn't care about market share at all". When Macs don't have Blu-Ray, it's "who needs Blu-Ray anyway?". When they do get Blu-Ray at some point in the future, it'll be "woah, Blu-Ray!!! How could I live without it before?"
I have a wide circle of friends a relatives and I would wager of about these 50 or so people almost 80% downright hate the new glassy displays, cant handle them at all. The opinions are the same here at the forums.
btw if the graph says it's in "thousans of units" then total sold is 15,276,000????? Isn't that too much?
Which doesn't disprove my premise that claiming "Macs are too expensive for this economy" is a not a valid excuse. Unless one thinks "Dells are too expensive for this economy" as well.
I have to admit I'm guilty as charged on this one.
However, Apple's focus didn't change, just during the boom times they also were grabbing market share. But it is HOW they were gaining market share. They didn't gain by going to lower margin/high volume computers. They were gaining share with HIGH margin computers. Now they are losing share, but keeping high margin computers.
The industry focus changed but Apple has stayed on target.
I never said the economy was the reason, but Macs are overpriced anyway, regardless of the economy.
15' and 17' MacBooks and Mac Pros are overpriced, it's just the way it is.
People buy them, so I guess it doesn't matter if they are.
Well, I've no right to speak on behalf of any others, but for me, is Apple interested in increasing their market share? Of course they are! But that is not the only goal they are pursuing. And I feel they will not do so in a way that sacrifices any of their other goals. So when their market share increases, good. When it doesn't in one quarter, I'm not prone to a knee-jerk reaction of "OMFG! Apple is dying! They need to put out a netbook and a headless Mac or they will fail!". As long as their other goals are being met, I'll take a "let's just wait and see what happens over the course of a few quarters" attitude.
And I never claimed you did. I was just responding, initially, to BTW's statement that "Apple doesn't have a price point there for these poor economic times."
Oh, I agree. And more elbow power to them. But at the end of the day, they're a public company with shareholders, and shareholders want more than decent profits year after year, they want growth. Over the last few years this growth has come mostly from iPods and iPhones, and even though Macs are selling better and better, a sub-5% marketshare worldwide is still a relative failure if you consider all the things that Apple has going for them today, they didn't have 10 years ago. They have the iPod and iPhone halo effect, the competition has been unusually weak for the last 2+ years (=Vista), they have BootCamp, they have affordable Macs (Mini, MacBook and to some degree the iMac), they have more product placement in movies and TV shows than any other computer brand... but after 25 years, the Mac is still "only" at 10% in the US and low single digits worldwide. That's kind of like carpet bombing a lake and all you catch is 3-4 fish.
That is very true and one of the most well put posts I 've read recently. That's why some of us think they are shooting themselves in the foot for not allowing options such as the matte display.
I said two of the largest, not the two largest. Apple has a much larger share of laptops than desktops and yes laptops outsell desktops now.
The last numbers I saw (sorry I don't recall where) had Apple desktop market share at < 3%, the only reason they are as high as they are overall is they are competitive in the laptop segment.
Common sense shows that Towers still far outsell all-in-ones in the desktop market. Don't you think it is odd that ever other manufacture offer several different lines of "towers" and typically only one line of all-in-ones? If all-in-ones were outselling towers at Dell don't you think they would stop producing towers?
Bingo! The last couple of years it seemed everyone on campus had a MacBook, but now everyone has a Netbook... except me of course.
I would certainly tell someone who crowed about a 0.1% gain not to be so confident.
Also, you clearly seem to be innumerate (the mathematical analog to illiterate). There is nothing in the market share statistic per se that says that growth has stopped. With this new fad of netbooks hitting the market, the numbers are skewed -- especially the volume numbers. Apple could have easily grown their numbers (and margin), but the flood of cheap, low-margin netbooks may have outpaced that growth. I would venture to guess that that is the case since netbooks are the flavor of the month.
Apple does make a product for people whose computing needs extend no further than requiring an e-mail appliance. It's called an iPhone. Anyway, your point is idiotic because that would be like saying that carmakers should make a product cheap enough to attract customers whose transportation needs are met by a bicycle. Apple does not design products for the bottom of the barrel market segment. You might find that statement harsh and snobbish, but Apple is about making the power of computers easy and accessible to people and there is a value in this. I feel sorry for people who are "happy" on $300-400 computers because they missing out on a lot of the potential uses that could better their lives. Also, they are going to be paying a lot of hidden costs that will dwarf that original low price tag.
BTW, I wrote my original post on my brand new, 0.6K (0.594K at MacMall) Mac mini, so your 1.5K figure is another misleading hyperbole.
I won't purchase a system with a glass/glossy display ever again. I wasn't thrilled going from my iBook to a MacBook 3 years ago, but I lived with it. When I got a Samsung NC10 netbook earlier this year it made me realize how much better matte displays are for me and where I use them.
So yes, only have glossy displays are scaring off people.
You sure hate that glossy display, huh?
The main problem is, over the last few years more and more non-professionals have bought the MacBook Pro because of the higher brag factor. Apple caved in to this and made the new MBP more 'boutique' than professional. This is one of the cons of having a small product range, they should have split the MBP in two branches... one for true professionals, the other a glossy MacBook Deluxe for customers who are more like the couple in the "Two @ssholes" skits on Saturday Night Live.
They fell in two consecutive quarters. It appears that the drop is beginning to "level off," but it's still a loss nonetheless. The typical cycle has them dropping only one quarter each year, and the other three quarters they make gains.
Apple has a clear decision
Do they want to fall to 5th place 6 months from now, or do they want to grow and recapture 3rd place?
If they continue to ignore the $350 Netbook they are ignoring the bulk of the growth.
And, if they had a $500 Netbook ($150 premium) I would immediately buy two (one for each of my kids).
Think of it this way, when Acer ships a $350 netbook, they have paid a ransom to Microsoft for XP. Apple doesn't have that cost burden with OS-X
Do they want to fall to 5th place 6 months from now, or do they want to grow and recapture 3rd place?
If they continue to ignore the $350 Netbook they are ignoring the bulk of the growth.
And, if they had a $500 Netbook ($150 premium) I would immediately buy two (one for each of my kids).
Think of it this way, when Acer ships a $350 netbook, they have paid a ransom to Microsoft for XP. Apple doesn't have that cost burden with OS-X
Uh, Mel...does that mean that since no one company gathers all the money in the world that all companies are losing money? This is NOT something anyone in economics knows. If you actually owned a company, you would know it's profitability that counts. That's it. Period. Sell one unit or one billion units, doesn't matter. Market share is irrelevant
That's a good way to put it. But it should also be clear that profit is not maximum when you are priced way at the high end and selling few units.
We get how it works. Some of us just don't think that Apple is at the right place on the curve, that there's a lower price where the extra money from sales gained would more than offset a smaller profit margin.
And don't forget about the possibility of apple adding additional models on the low end to the pricier high end stuff they already offer.
Did you even read the story? Apple's market share was down, meaning they are selling less in relation to the total.
Who says that all companies that lost market share did it for the same reason?
I have heard otherwise, that MS is desperate to keep the low end business and licenses to netbooks for dirt cheap. Looking at pricing online, I saw machines only $20 cheaper with Linux.