Blogs

Posted by unregistered user at 4/24/08 1:40 p.m.

Hmm, sales of Macs really started spiking in 2007, right around the time Vista was released. Curious....

Posted by fletc3her at 4/24/08 2:12 p.m.

I saw an analysis of historic trends in the industry and what was interesting to see was that the Macintosh has actually had pretty consistent sales growth over its lifetime. However, two trends served to marginalize the Macintosh.

First, DOS and then Windows squeezed most of the competing platforms out of the market. Commodore, Amiga, Texas Instruments, Atari, PET, CP/M, SGI, IRIX, DEC, even UNIX to a large extent, and for all intents and purposes Sun, IBM, and many others have all fallen by the wayside and Microsoft has picked up most of their business.

Second, the "personal computer" market has expanded greatly. Many tasks that were performed by special purpose devices like typewriters, calculators, cash registers, etc. are now performed by customized personal computers. Embedded control systems have also now largely been replaced by customized personal computers. Most of these computers are based on Windows so as the market expands Microsoft is the largest beneficiary.

It wasn't that the Macintosh market wasn't growing, but the personal computer market as a whole was growing faster, and Microsoft was taking over market share from failing platforms to a much greater degree than Macintosh.

I think we're in a new phase of the personal computer evolution now. The operating system is in some ways becoming less important as more interfaces move to the network and Web interfaces. This gives the Macintosh greater leeway to compete against Windows since software is often not tied to proprietary APIs any more.

Posted by cragar at 4/24/08 2:27 p.m.

yes, Vista has helped fuel Apple's growth of recent. And Apple has seized this golden opportunity to capitalize on Vista's bad reputation, however warranted, by blitzing us with a multi-million dollar "PC versus MAC" ad campaign to reinforce this perception.
...and yet Microsoft still surpasses earning estimates.
Apple may be on a roll, but MS is still in control.

Posted by Sabon at 4/24/08 2:45 p.m.

fletc3her - What was happening was that Microsoft was legally or illegally cutting off distribution channels to everyone but themselves. Starting back in the 80s, computer makers were not allowed to install anything except MS Windows on computers they sold to the public. It's pretty hard for anyone making a competing operating system to get any sales.

I know Macs had their own hardware and their own sales channels. That is a different story. The clueless CEOs that Apple had took what Steve Jobs left them with and made a mess of things.

The amazing thing is, even with the inept CEOs at Apple, the product was so much better than Windows for years that people kept buying Macs. When Windows finally caught up (until Mac OS X), that's when Apple almost went bankrupt.

Now that things are moving forward again at Apple, it took awhile for Steve Jobs to get things rolling, Apple's sales started moving up again and lately _really_ moving up.

On the other side, OEMs (Compaq, Dell, etc.) are now allowed to install other operating systems when the courts finally deemed the contracts Microsoft forced on them as illegal.

The only thing holding Dell and HP back now is marketing money. If they start pushing Linux, Microsoft will start pulling a lot of marketing money and give it to the other computer makers. Unless all of them work together (which is illegal), Microsoft can do their best to ruin Dell, HP, or whoever is publicly trying to give people alternatives. And Linux, especially the Ubuntu distro is definitely good enough for most people and better than Windows in a lot of ways. Including no viruses. I still prefer my iMac though.

Posted by unregistered user at 4/24/08 11:01 p.m.

cragar - Maybe MS is in control... or maybe not so much. Lost in all the Apple earnings hoopla and morning-after analysis is another piece of the puzzle:

"April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. declined 5 percent in extended trading after it reported an 11 percent drop in third-quarter profit and forecast earnings that may miss analysts' estimates as Windows software sales fell."

...Interesting results for a company in control.

Posted by unregistered user at 4/25/08 1:44 a.m.

For what it's worth, the data point that most grabbed me was the rate of growth of the Mac business relative to the rest of the industry - 51% this year compared to last - a rate of growth 3.5X better than the PC industry.

I see this growth rate as indicative of a halo effect starting to play out that touches so many aspects of Apple's business.

Given that, I took a swag at articulating the strategic pieces at play for Apple in a post lovingly called, 'Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect.'

Here is the URL: http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/04/holy-shit-apple.html

Check it out if interested.

Cheers,

Mark
--
Are You Working with Chickens or Pigs?
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2006/01/would_you_rathe.html

Posted by unregistered user at 4/25/08 2:47 a.m.

At some point Apple will sell OS X on a wider range of Intel Hardware, perhaps in partnership with HP and Dell.

This happened with Steve Job's earlier version, NeXTStep. Back in 1993 the kit was too expensive, but now the combination of cheap hardware with a great OS could be compelling.

Imagine how Apples market share would quickly change !

Posted by unregistered user at 5/1/08 10:58 a.m.

I think (disclosure: Mac fanboy) that the gradual migration to non-PC devices and web-based applications (Google Docs, anyone?) may in the long run help Apple boost its market share. Apple is a hardware company, and a web-based universe means the operating system becomes less relevant. OSX may be nice, but it's really not going to be that important for the average user (that's why they buy Windows machines now: they don't care about the OS, just what's cheap). If apple ports its OS to other Intel-based machines, they may get a revenue bump, but they probably won't do it because they're in the game to sell boxes. Design and snob appeal are what's carried them so far. Lower prices on the Mac boxes (they are coming down) and an emphasis on alternative devices (iPhone and iPod) will help drive the consumer market. Microsoft is still wedded to Windows, which is increasingly (especially with the Vista issues) looking less relevant. There's a key difference: Microsoft is a software company and Apple is a hardware company. Microsoft's core strength is going to be in the applications, especially Office, where they rightly see Google as the big competitor, not Apple. Apple's got its sights set on the Dells and Sonys, and OSX is just a way to get more tech-savvy creative people to splurge on a Mac. If Apple really wanted to undercut Microsoft's Windows monopoly, they'd offer a lower-priced Mac box with an open source (but easy-to-use) OS and the Firefox browser set to Google Docs as a homepage, targeting both consumer and geek markets. Business users would follow if their IT managers started buying Apple again. That kind of radical step, however, would involve a bit of ego-checking on Steve Jobs' part, so I don't know if they'll go that far.