Chance Furlong
2011-04-25 03:22:45 UTC
From Tech Night Owl:
http://tinyurl.com/3dnx64p
Why Buy a New PC When You Get a Mac?
April 22nd, 2011
One of the more telling statistics from Apple’s quarterly financials
this week is the fact that Mac sales are still growing ahead of the
overall PC industry quarter after quarter. This time, Apple recorded a
28% sales boost over the same quarter last year, while the PC industry
remained flat. Now maybe such arcane issues as how many Macs were sold
isn’t terribly important to you, but the trends are fascinating.
First and foremost is the fact that most Mac hardware updates these days
aren’t touted with special media events, but with simple press releases.
Yes, there are signs that a refresh might be coming, usually signaled by
a drop in inventories, or messages received by dealers and distributors
not to place new orders for existing product. Perhaps Apple feeds a few
stories under “deep background” to the media to fuel demand, but the
roll out tends to be otherwise relatively low-key.
Despite that, the latest and greatest MacBook Pro family, along with
last year’s major upgrade to the MacBook Air (which did earn a media
event), evidently resulted in extremely high sales. The iMac is
reportedly doing well too, and there are rumors afoot that its refresh,
incorporating the new Intel Sandy Bridge processors and the Thunderbolt
peripheral port, will arrive in the next few weeks.
But why are PC sales stalling and Mac sales soaring? Well, when I asked
Stephen Baker, a VP for the NPD Group, about this, he said the PC
industry was coming off huge demand for upgrades, as more and more
customers were buying new gear equipped with Windows 7. Certainly, after
the Windows Vista debacle, the new OS must have been a revelation, since
it seems largely freed of the ills that impacted Vista’s acceptance.
At the same time, if PC demand flattens, where’s that put Apple? Is
Apple to be considered immune to the perils of the PC market? Or does
Apple play in a different sandbox? Probably the latter, because Apple
has gone through several years of growing the Mac marketplace ahead of
most PC makers. Well, some of the latter did get huge boosts for a time
at the low end because of the short-lived advance of the netbook.
There are also suggestions that PC sales are stumbling because of demand
for the iPad. Baker places the main impact in the mid-range of the PC
notebook market, rather than the far cheaper netbooks. Regardless, if
anything, Apple’s mobile gadgets are building a collective “halo effect”
that is luring more and more customers to the Mac. Certainly, the
smoothly integrated ecosystem and the reputed freedom from serious
malware has helped, and there doesn’t seem a need for those Mac versus
PC ads anymore. Apple seems to have moved past that.
Certainly Apple has plenty of room to grow their portion of the PC
universe. Market share remains in the single digits for the most part
around the world, so Apple may have little place to go but up so long as
they can keep he growth curve ahead of the industry. More to the point,
while the tech media raves about the newest developments on a Mac
notebook, such as the increasing availability of solid state drives, and
Thunderbolt, when was the last time anyone made a big deal of a new PC
from the likes of Dell or HP, the market leaders?
For years, PCs have largely been commodity products, with little to
distinguish one model from the next. Usually, a PC builder will offer
loads of verisons with tiny, often indistinguishable, differences in an
effort to coax sales out of every nook and cranny in the market. Having
so many choices, however, is apt to confuse all but the most technically
savvy customers. Just remember what happened to Apple years ago when
there were so many Performa models, even Apple’s executives couldn’t
figure out which was which.
By having very few models, along with strictly a modest set of
build-to-order options, Mac users have little difficulty figuring out
what model might suit them best. I challenge anyone, without a scorecard
or advice from an expert, to make an easy selection at Dell’s site among
the clutter.
Worse, the more models a company offers, the smaller number of identical
components are ordered, which means each unit is apt to cost more to
build. Apple cleverly leverages many of the same parts across as many
products as possible, taking advantage of the economies of scale. As
many of you know, when it comes to mobile gadgets, Apple has used
similar parts in iPads, iPhones, and so forth and so on. The new
components in the iPad 2, for example, will clearly appear in the next
iPhone, whether it’s an iPhone 5 or an iPhone 4GS.
Further, Apple is making a smart decision with Mac OS X Lion by adding
iOS inspired features. That will help ease the Mac learning curve for
new converts, not to mention boosting sales prospects. Yes, some
industry pundits still insist Apple needs to build a cheap Mac, well
cheaper than the $699 Mac mini. But Apple clearly has other ideas, and
the sales figures to prove they are absolutely right.
http://tinyurl.com/3dnx64p
Why Buy a New PC When You Get a Mac?
April 22nd, 2011
One of the more telling statistics from Apple’s quarterly financials
this week is the fact that Mac sales are still growing ahead of the
overall PC industry quarter after quarter. This time, Apple recorded a
28% sales boost over the same quarter last year, while the PC industry
remained flat. Now maybe such arcane issues as how many Macs were sold
isn’t terribly important to you, but the trends are fascinating.
First and foremost is the fact that most Mac hardware updates these days
aren’t touted with special media events, but with simple press releases.
Yes, there are signs that a refresh might be coming, usually signaled by
a drop in inventories, or messages received by dealers and distributors
not to place new orders for existing product. Perhaps Apple feeds a few
stories under “deep background” to the media to fuel demand, but the
roll out tends to be otherwise relatively low-key.
Despite that, the latest and greatest MacBook Pro family, along with
last year’s major upgrade to the MacBook Air (which did earn a media
event), evidently resulted in extremely high sales. The iMac is
reportedly doing well too, and there are rumors afoot that its refresh,
incorporating the new Intel Sandy Bridge processors and the Thunderbolt
peripheral port, will arrive in the next few weeks.
But why are PC sales stalling and Mac sales soaring? Well, when I asked
Stephen Baker, a VP for the NPD Group, about this, he said the PC
industry was coming off huge demand for upgrades, as more and more
customers were buying new gear equipped with Windows 7. Certainly, after
the Windows Vista debacle, the new OS must have been a revelation, since
it seems largely freed of the ills that impacted Vista’s acceptance.
At the same time, if PC demand flattens, where’s that put Apple? Is
Apple to be considered immune to the perils of the PC market? Or does
Apple play in a different sandbox? Probably the latter, because Apple
has gone through several years of growing the Mac marketplace ahead of
most PC makers. Well, some of the latter did get huge boosts for a time
at the low end because of the short-lived advance of the netbook.
There are also suggestions that PC sales are stumbling because of demand
for the iPad. Baker places the main impact in the mid-range of the PC
notebook market, rather than the far cheaper netbooks. Regardless, if
anything, Apple’s mobile gadgets are building a collective “halo effect”
that is luring more and more customers to the Mac. Certainly, the
smoothly integrated ecosystem and the reputed freedom from serious
malware has helped, and there doesn’t seem a need for those Mac versus
PC ads anymore. Apple seems to have moved past that.
Certainly Apple has plenty of room to grow their portion of the PC
universe. Market share remains in the single digits for the most part
around the world, so Apple may have little place to go but up so long as
they can keep he growth curve ahead of the industry. More to the point,
while the tech media raves about the newest developments on a Mac
notebook, such as the increasing availability of solid state drives, and
Thunderbolt, when was the last time anyone made a big deal of a new PC
from the likes of Dell or HP, the market leaders?
For years, PCs have largely been commodity products, with little to
distinguish one model from the next. Usually, a PC builder will offer
loads of verisons with tiny, often indistinguishable, differences in an
effort to coax sales out of every nook and cranny in the market. Having
so many choices, however, is apt to confuse all but the most technically
savvy customers. Just remember what happened to Apple years ago when
there were so many Performa models, even Apple’s executives couldn’t
figure out which was which.
By having very few models, along with strictly a modest set of
build-to-order options, Mac users have little difficulty figuring out
what model might suit them best. I challenge anyone, without a scorecard
or advice from an expert, to make an easy selection at Dell’s site among
the clutter.
Worse, the more models a company offers, the smaller number of identical
components are ordered, which means each unit is apt to cost more to
build. Apple cleverly leverages many of the same parts across as many
products as possible, taking advantage of the economies of scale. As
many of you know, when it comes to mobile gadgets, Apple has used
similar parts in iPads, iPhones, and so forth and so on. The new
components in the iPad 2, for example, will clearly appear in the next
iPhone, whether it’s an iPhone 5 or an iPhone 4GS.
Further, Apple is making a smart decision with Mac OS X Lion by adding
iOS inspired features. That will help ease the Mac learning curve for
new converts, not to mention boosting sales prospects. Yes, some
industry pundits still insist Apple needs to build a cheap Mac, well
cheaper than the $699 Mac mini. But Apple clearly has other ideas, and
the sales figures to prove they are absolutely right.