've had a think about this overnight and there is a scenario that would make sense to everyone and disadvantage nobody, except some people who might live in Washington State.
Anyone reviewing Apple's situation objectively would be amazed that the company has managed to survive this long: declining market share, an extended period of what could only have been called uninspiring leadership (take a bow, all the CEOs between Jobs I and Jobs II), confused marketing, need I continue
Even now, Apple - with it's 4.5% of global PC market share - relies disproportionately on the health of the US market: something like 55% of Apple's quarterly sales are made in a country that has around 3% of the world's population, which means that the other 97% accounts for the other 45%.
In reality, even this interpretation is false: Apple is - and will probably always be - a "First World" or developed world company (BTW, I apologize to anyone to whom those terms are insensitive; I'm not a fan of First World myself, but it's commonly understood so there you go): it's products simply do not make economic sense to the vast majority of the markets in the developing world nor are they necessarily easy to find as the local Apple representation is either a distributor or a direct Apple office that simply isn't scaled up to fight the Wintel hegemony.
Before I break, here are some figures according to the CIA World Factbook
People's Republic of China: Population: 1.30 billion 71% aged 15-64
India: Population: 1.08 billion, 63% aged 15-64
Indonesia: 0.24 billion, 65.7%
Brazil: 0.18 billion, 67.9%
With the exception of Brazil, all of these countries - with a combined population of 2.8 billion have wealth distribution as good as or better than the United States. The problem is that the wealth simply could never afford pure Apple technology, except possibly the mini.
SFW, I hear you ask
What if Apple decided to accede to the overtures of a select group of PC manufacturers who are
a) well established, for whatever reason, in these developing markets with mature distribution channels and brand presence.
b) Sick and tired of waiting for MSFT to ship yet another revision of a discredited operating system.
c) Even more sick and tired of maintaining outsized customer support functions to keep alive the machines of customers running the current version of MSFT's discredited operating system.
All that would be needed would be a reference Intel motherboard design (which would inevitably require a Firewire port - ring any bells?) and a list of approved components (disc drives, optical, and video card) and an Intel version of Mac OS X with reduced localisation features, probably limited to International English and the local language which would reduce global cannibalization of Apple's existing markets, and some strict licensing terms ("try and import one of these systems into the USA, the EU or Australasia and we'll use your ass as an umbrella stand - and the umbrella will be open").
Make that deal with Lenovo, Sony and HP (leave those pesky Dell critters out, just because Michael needs a lesson in humility and Kevin Rollins is a jerk) and let's see whether Apple could ever be a real global player.
Existing developers should also be happy: after all, they get to sell product to billions of people who have never heard of them. And, even more importantly, Apple gets to encourage a new developer community in China and India - neither of which are laggards in having an educated workforce.
The hardware partners free themselves of the yoke of having their fortunes tied to a software company who couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map.
Businesses in the developing world get access to a secure operating system with a reasonable applications portfolio, whilst private individuals get access to a contemporary operating system today (as opposed to waiting to the middle of 2007) and they don't even have to buy a dual-core system to run it.
This is a solution that would make a lot of sense of all of the rumours, without any unreasonable downsides
at least, that's my opinion.
