so because the last release of ilife and iwork were free (updates actually) you find it fair to say that they dont make any money of either?
does anyone even switch to mac because of these two?
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Microsoft Losing Next Generation of Office Users by Delaying iOS Release
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so because the last release of ilife and iwork were free (updates actually) you find it fair to say that they dont make any money of either?
does anyone even switch to mac because of these two?
I'm all for the Office for iPad, however I don't expect anything coming soon..
Stating $2.5b is the most outlandish comment.
Anyone here has heard if cannibalisation? By releasing iPad versions of office they would be detracting sales of their own widows tablets.
Stating $2.5b is the most outlandish comment.
Anyone here has heard if cannibalisation? By releasing iPad versions of office they would be detracting sales of their own widows tablets.
Yes. Why else would you switch to a Mac? You do it because you realize that out of the box, Windows has absolutely nothing useful. You can't open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (they're all sold seperately), there's no way to watch videos (windows has no video codecs preinstalled), and there's no good way for casual users to edit videos or pictures. You switch to a Mac because you want to be able to do something - anything - with your computer.
I suspect you've either had inadequate experience with OS X or Windows. People with inadequate experience with either assume that the other is more or less the same with different graphics. They're not. Windows is the most useless OS one can find, whereas on OS X, few people even need to download any programs because OS X already comes with everything they need.
Apple's business strategy for quite a while has been to commoditize software to drive hardware profits. They're the exact opposite of MS, who until recently reinventing themselves as a devices/services company, drew all their profit from software and let their OEM's put out cheap hardware with low profit margins
Don't believe me, here's an example of Apple's quarterly revenue breakdown
iLife, iWork, iCloud, Logic, FinalCut, etc, all go under Other. Which explains why they don't really care about updating them all that much. Or making Pro users happy
And those are selling oh so well. So well in fact Microsoft had to take a write-off on the first generation of them. Might have to on the second gen as well.
The Apple Store in the mall down the street from me has on a Tuesday afternoon roughly 150 customers and 40 employees in it, meanwhile upstairs the Microsoft Store has about 8 employees and no customers, oh wait there is one playing with the X-Box.
Sure, if the world of business was nothing but billion dollar advertising agencies... in which case I'd love to see what they advertise...
Also, there is at least one advertising agency that makes a killing advertising Office 365.
Just because they advertise it, doesn't mean they use it.
I can see why many people would see Apple as a hardware company.
Often, when analysing a company, you have to look beyond what generates the profit. Here, it has been argued that hardware is where the profit is. I would suggest that what drives so many people to buy what Apple is selling, and pay a 'premium' for the hardware, is the user experience that OSX and iOS brings, and for some it's also about having a popular, premium brand's products etc.
It then becomes easier to see why other companies that try to compete fully with Apple don't succeed as well (or at all?) as they desired/expected...
To compete with Apple, the trick is not to focus on the hardware or the software per se, but the overall experience & pleasure users get from using Apple products. It also means that some core values come in to play as well... Can you imagine the CEO of MSFT, or Samsung etc telling an investor/analyst to 'get out of the stock' if they don't accept that profits to build shareholder value is not the way forward?
On this basis I can see why instead of buying a HP 15.6" laptop with 4GB of RAM and 500Gb HD or under $300 at Staples today, I opt for a $1100 Macbook Air with smaller screen, smaller HD etc...
Kodak was a chemical company that made film. They made a couple of low end cameras for branding purposes, but their profits, expertise, and production was all about film. They were a film company, not a camera company.
There wasn't really a point where Kodak could have made a different decision and saved themselves because they - despite having a couple of early patents - had no real expertise in designing or manufacturing chips. Companies like Panasonic and Sony were able to gain marketshare because they had expertise in electronics; companies like Canon and Nikon are still relevant because they have expertise in lenses. But Kodak's expertise in chemistry and film was not helpful because new cameras don't use film.
Some thoughts...
I agree with the premium branding. One of Apple's biggest accomplishments is they turned hardware into a premium market and made it "normal" for everyone and their mom to purchase expensive hardware with 40-50% profit margins.
When it comes to software though, they commoditized it. You commoditize something, you drive down its value. While hardware is now premium, software that costs more than $10 now considered too expensive. They flipped it
This whole "premium user experience" doesn't extend beyond first party software. You look at third party software. Take iOS games since everyone argues every year that 99 iOS games are gonna kill consoles. On iOS you got Flappy Bird. On consoles you have AAA experiences.
In 2014 software is now the cheap commodity - the equivalent of that $300 OEM desktop that would fail in 6 months. Apple flipped it
To compete with Apple, you get an edge on them the same way they got an edge on Microsoft - by uncommoditizing the complement. Microsoft's whole business model hedged on software profits with hardware as a cheap complement. Apple turned the complement into something of value and squeezed Microsoft by commoditizing MS's primary market.
You want to compete with Apple, you restore the value of software, especially on mobile where software has been disposable since the app store was created. And hopefully maintain the value of hardware this time around. IMO, the ideal for the consumer would be for both markets to have premium value, not one at the expense of the other.
I use LibreOffice on my Macbook and I'm pretty satisfied with it. No need for a paid, proprietary word processing platform.
Is this an actual fact? Or are we just hating on the surface? Because regardless of either, whatever strategy they're using for Office seems to be working since it's the industry standard.
That's because you're trying to imagine doing it on the touchscreen. That's just silly. Nobody who does serious typing on a tablet uses the touchscreen keyboard. An iPad with an external keyboard can make you just as productive as a if you were using a laptop.
Like I said above, nobody who does serious typing on a tablet uses the touchscreen. External keyboards all the way. Try again with one, and you'll be amazed.
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M$ crap marketing strategy
Once again, Microsoft's attempt to marginalise the Apple platform is failing...
Many years ago when M$ released the first version of MS Office for Mac OS X, they included that Entourage crap instead of making a true Outlook for Mac like they had back when they had Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9.
The reason they did this was to hobble Mac users enough to try and encourage them to use Windows instead.... Guess what? After 10 years, it failed and so they released Outlook 2011 for Mac OS X... Finally, an Outlook that is vastly more comparable to the Windows version (though still lacking some areas).
So now M$ plans to hold off for as long as possible on releasing an Office for iPad... Why?, so they can release it on Surface first in the hope that people will ditch the iPad.
Clearly M$ haven't learnt that trying to build a business through using it's market position (and arrogance) to effectively try and force users to move to Microsoft clearly isn't working for them... Hey M$, try innovating something that people actually want for a change?
Once again, Microsoft's attempt to marginalise the Apple platform is failing...
Many years ago when M$ released the first version of MS Office for Mac OS X, they included that Entourage crap instead of making a true Outlook for Mac like they had back when they had Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9.
The reason they did this was to hobble Mac users enough to try and encourage them to use Windows instead.... Guess what? After 10 years, it failed and so they released Outlook 2011 for Mac OS X... Finally, an Outlook that is vastly more comparable to the Windows version (though still lacking some areas).
So now M$ plans to hold off for as long as possible on releasing an Office for iPad... Why?, so they can release it on Surface first in the hope that people will ditch the iPad.
Clearly M$ haven't learnt that trying to build a business through using it's market position (and arrogance) to effectively try and force users to move to Microsoft clearly isn't working for them... Hey M$, try innovating something that people actually want for a change?
How so? I am a teacher getting my pupils to use google drive for collaborative work in class and it is serving their needs way better than Office ever could.
Writing is a process, and what does it matter which platform or software I use?
That's about the only place where I use MSFT products anymore...because I have to.
Soon as I step out the office, it's 100% iWork's and other OSX and iOS tools. I simply have no use or need for MSFT.
Your student's loss. Office will continue to be the industry standard. And their online services will continue to be far more powerful than Google Docs.
yes ive only been around and using macs since the late 80s.
ilife has come with new macs but iwork has not so just as word, excel or powerpoint have not come with pcs. as far as codecs for a long long time everyone downloaded perian right away.
i honestly dont now what you are trying to respond to but i just pointed out the new versions of ilife and iwork have not and are not free for everyone. i asked if those two packages were still a reason people were switching. i know they targeted people with the get a mac ads with ilife and i simply asked if that was still working.
come on if apple didnt have insanely popular iphones and ipads (everything else the same) then that purple part would be over 12% (btw that 3% is still an insane amount of money). i was responding to a point which said they dont make any money of these softwares not that their sales totals were minuscule compared to iphone.
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A Non Issue?
Is Microsoft losing out on "potential mobile users" even that significant? I would be surprised if a lot of bigger businesses even officially allowed tablets to be integrated into their internal networks. Even 2 years ago when I was in IT, trying to convince Directors that tablets could be a valuable asset to a company and not a toy was painful. We often had to free trial them to get the directors to even consider possible tablet based solutions. The modus operandi is still the desktop workstation army + some servers for many managed IT firms and even nimbler self managed IT companies.
Even when we convinced some firms to get Tablets, quite often they were just cheaper alternatives for laptops when remote connecting into the local network. They still ended up running the desktop version of office in the end.
Is Microsoft losing out on "potential mobile users" even that significant? I would be surprised if a lot of bigger businesses even officially allowed tablets to be integrated into their internal networks. Even 2 years ago when I was in IT, trying to convince Directors that tablets could be a valuable asset to a company and not a toy was painful. We often had to free trial them to get the directors to even consider possible tablet based solutions. The modus operandi is still the desktop workstation army + some servers for many managed IT firms and even nimbler self managed IT companies.
Even when we convinced some firms to get Tablets, quite often they were just cheaper alternatives for laptops when remote connecting into the local network. They still ended up running the desktop version of office in the end.
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This isn't an issue of power, but about which software meets their needs better.
In the past, if my pupils needed to send me documents, they had to email it to me. I then had to download those files, edit them, then attach them again before sending them back. It was frankly a lot of work.
With google drive, my pupils can directly share their documents with me, and I can monitor and edit them concurrently with my pupils. The process is a lot more convenient and seamless.
Plus, everything my pupils need to create clean, properly formatted documents, google drive has. What exactly are they missing by not using Office? The ability to add black backgrounds and translucent blue font?