I hate marketshare; useless statistic. Bah!
CmdrLaForge said:
Hi,
I guess some of you just miss the point. I have to agree with DHM. The point is that Apples marketshare dropped below 2%. And thats the point. They need more marketshare ! We currently have around 7 Mio active Mac users (even if Jobs tells that there are 25Mio) in comparison to 400 Mio PC users. Apple spended 1 billion dollars in developing OS X If they earn if they sell it for $120 and with a COS of $70 they only earn $50 they need 20E6 to buy it ! Or make the money with sales of hardware. With that low marketshare they have to charge more per unit. But how can you get more people to switch with outdated and overpriced hardware ? Apples marketshare dropped from 10% 15 years ago to 1.x% now and is still declining !!!! If this goes on we won't celebrate another 20 years. Period. The prices are so far away from the PC world right now !!!
First, were do you get your numbers? Second, are you using pure marketshare data and are you comparing that against installed base? Marketshare is important, especially for the perception of consumers(I want what others have) and developers (I need a large base to sell to). However, we must be careful with this number because Apple does not sell to the entire computer industry, ie. cubicle farms for telemarketers, etc. This market is cut-rate, low-quality with a high-turnover, exactly the kind of market that Apple cannot compete in. Furthermore, and I know we go over this everytime some wag mentions market-share: if Apple sold 10,000 computers in 1984 (out of 1 million) and now sells 100,000 (out of 20 Million) you could say their market-share dropped from 10% to 5%, and yet they are selling 10x as many units. This isn't the whole story, but neither is market-share.
In my mind, Apple needs to do 3 things:
Headless iMac: Keep the iMac as a flagship product, but give people a renewed Cube (or another form figure, surprise me Apple!) with the fastest G5 possible. In fact, shove a G5 in everything you can and don't change the prices or if possible lower them. But Apple must be willing, this bears repeating, to lose some profitibility on its consumer machines. The G5 Powermac should be a money-maker, but the iBook and the eMac should be an easier entry into the Macintosh world. I've noticed once people buy a Mac they want to do it again.
Advertise: Get Chiat Day off their asses and start producing iLife commercials again. (Remember the iMovie/iDVD commercials?) And show OSX as well, advertise No virii, security, etc. You guys had the balls to proclaim you had the 'World Most Powerful Computer' so step up.
Innovate, innovate, innovate! Apple must be the bleeding edge for the computer industry, think about the iPad (a tablet that actually works for people) the video-iPod (I've been thinking about this one, not really a iPod for movies, but rather for photographers, be able to plug in your DV camera and dump the whole thing to your 40Gig drive and keep shooting, or for photographers. Maybe a smart-card port, and the ability to see pictures and organize them using gasp! iPhoto once it's plugged into a Mac.
I lied, I though of another: Be willing to deal with Windows. I know that battle has been lost in many respects, but a Mac should be able to coexist with Wintel. Keep working on the network connections, also port iChat AV to Windows, you'll sell more iSights that way. However, do NOT port the rest of iLife or anything else. Show someone iTunes/iChat AV and then tell them there's more on the other pasture. Do it in a commercial, in magazines, etc. And yeah, and mention it works with Linux. Push that, a Mac UNIX your grandmother could use, iLife MS Office for the rest of your life, the great negotiator works with Windows and Linux. But cooler.
Lastly, Apple's hardware, good stuff. Overpriced. Maybe. Outdated. I doubt it. But OSX. Priceless.
I'm hoping that when the new systems (rev.B) are released the price on the current models will come down some. I'm currently on a 12" 800 mHz iBook G3. I've been SO drooling for a G5, y'all just can't believe how bad I want one.
