[APPLE] "Switch" One Year Later: No One Switched

[NFS4]

http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=39614

A year after Apple launched its high-profile "Switch" ad campaign, the company has nothing but lost market share, fewer users, a dwindling third-party developer pool, and, of course, the lovely Janie Porche, who saved Christmas. But as companies like Dell, HP, and IBM continue to distance themselves, sales-wise, from Apple, it's become increasingly clear than nothing the company does--ad campaigns, cool portable MP3 players, a rock-solid operating system, and even the debatably fastest PC on earth--is going to reverse its eroding usage share. With over 1 billion people using PCs vs. just 25 million using Macs, the numbers sort of speak for themselves. I think the big question now is whether Apple can remain viable as a niche player in the market. My gut feeling is that they can, but then I was an Amiga fan years ago, so maybe I'm not the right person to ask.

 

[JetBlack69]

Poor Apple.

 

[Intelman07]

Bah those ads were lame anyways....... the people talked like they couldn't even use the computer.

 

[ed21x]

that site isn't exactly the most unbiased site out there... but for the mac haters, it'll do just fine

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: ed21x
that site isn't exactly the most unbiased site out there... but for the mac haters, it'll do just fine

Well, it's kind of hard to argue with marketshare, sales figures and earnings reports

 

[AnImuS]

"and, of course, the lovely Janie Porche, who saved Christmas"

ha that was funny.
all i can say is i hope longhorn becomes a good OS so i dont have to keep hearing "can you run osx"

 

[BD2003]

As long as their systems remain absurdly expensive and relatively slow, they are going to keep losing market share.

Theres no reason to pay over $1000 for a 1ghz machine if a 2.4 ghz machine can be aquired for less than $500. Even average joe and joe millionaire can do that math.

 

[mechBgon]

No one switched? Sounds like people switched, all right... but not in the direction Apple wanted.

*flees from the wrath of ViRGE*

 

[AnImuS]

Originally posted by: BD2003
As long as their systems remain absurdly expensive and relatively slow, they are going to keep losing market share.

Theres no reason to pay over $1000 for a 1ghz machine if a 2.4 ghz machine can be aquired for less than $500. Even average joe and joe millionaire can do that math.

ya i agree its always been price. i mean for their top end model for 3g's you dont even get a display. so add another couple hundred if you dont own one. Lets not also forget their gaming division which is still pretty weak.
i guess well have to see how well their G5 sells.

 

[mosco]

Well, in this most recent quarter, they had a profit of 19 million on 1.5 billion in sales. Thats better than we can say about AMD in terms of profit(haha, i think intel had almost a billion in profit, ouch, and i own an AMD system). The quarter before that they made money on computers but had some "one-time" fees they had to pay that put them into the red. With 4 billion in the bank i don't they are going anywhere(although it might be less after the purchases they made). I do think the G5 will help. I belong to the world of PCs and Macs so i know a little bit more about the mac community. I know people who have been waiting about 2 years for the G5 before they would buy a new machine.

 

[GL]

Actually it's quite easy to argue with those figures. The whole business world involves degenerating multidimensional environments into single dimension numbers, then arbitrarily adding dimension to the numbers by claiming why they are the way they are, what they'll be in the future, and how they're going to get there. It's a lot of Voodoo magic if you ask me. There is too much subjective human input for many of the figures to be worth much without viewing them in context.

I don't think these numbers are bad at all. In fact, I think they're promising if they're taken in context. A substantial number of Mac users were fully aware that Apple was about to release the next-best-thing and were hesitant to upgrade until such a product became available. At a microscopic level, this sort of thing happens on a seasonal basis when sales plummet before anticipated release dates. IMHO, the past year was an extended version of the pre-release-date syndrome. Even to die-hard Mac freaks, this past year it became completely obvious that the G4 platform was going nowhere fast and was outdated. Nobody wanted to purchase a PowerMac line unless they really needed to. To a lesser extent, the unavailability of software titles like Quark also kept a significant portion of Apple's customers from purchasing new hardware. However, look at Apple's laptop sales and the figures are quite positive.

So, the question that remains is "Why didn't Apple's sales plummet?". IMHO, new Apple customers picked up the slack (i.e. like myself and a few other people I know). The coming year will definitely clarify the situation, as the G5 platform will be out and there will be no excuses for current Apple customers not to participate in a product refresh. I don't even think I'm making a bold prediction when I say that I think the coming year will see Apple's sales of PowerMacs double over the past year's figures.

I hope I don't even need to mention that extrapolating marketshare from unit sales is an imprecise science. Ask a Mac user how long he/she keeps his/her computer before upgrading to a new one. Compare that to the typical PC user. For some reason, Mac users tend to keep their computers longer than their PC counterparts. For the sake of simplicity, let's say in the time that a Mac user owns one Mac, a PC user owns two PCs. You still only have two people but if you apply this marketshare Voodoo, it'll appear as though there are two PC users to the one Mac user. It's almost as bad as determining how many Windows users there are by looking at sales of Windows. There are way more Windows users than there are sales of Windows. Even so, there are still many people included in business figures as Windows users that formatted their computer and installed an alternative OS.

Of course, my next point is anecdotal but _ALL_ my friends are impressed with my Apple laptop. There is one for sure who will buy his first Apple very soon, and the others are thinking seriously about switching when it comes time to buy a new computer. I would say there are 8 potential new Mac users right there - half will very likely follow through. The more they see me use it, the more they realize that it's no longer the crippled platform it once was. And all have come away wishing they could use OS X instead of Windows, after using it for the first time. That's pretty impressive to me as none are really power users, so their reasons for using OS X are not due to its UNIX underpinnings (they don't care), or because it's simple to use, but because they dig the way everything works. Additionally, they had to put up with years of myself making fun of the crappy Mac platform. So their perception of the platform is biased toward the negative.

So, time will tell. Apple has been dying for the past 15 years according to the critics. I for one think they'll be in a substantially better financial position a year from now than they are now.

 

[AnImuS]

nvm kiddies

 

[mosco]

Well said GL. It was a good point about Quark, as that was a major reason why many people did not upgrade. they have sold 6.5 million songs through the itunes music store. And thats ONLY from US customers. I think that once apple releases itunes and ITMS for the PC in or before december, that will also provide for a financial boost.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

of course, the lovely Janie Porche, who saved Christmas.

Where the hell was good 'ol Janie when I needed her....You see, I took this cord, plugged one end into my camera, plugged the other end into my Mac, And guess what...Nothing happened!! No pictures for me, Needed drivers. Now who wants to download Mac drivers on Christmas..

 

[KDOG]

Hmmm, when it comes to macs, I am reminded of a saying:

"If you make a computer an idiot can use, only idiots will use it."

I think that about covers it....

 

[RalfHutter]

I'd buy an Apple this second if that Stoned Chick would marry me.

 

[The Sauce]

You know the sad thing is that Apple had it, right in the palm of their hands. Good hardware, a great OS, a dedicated fanbase...and they tried to force it down everyone's throat in only one flavor at only their price and they lost it. If you ask me they deserve to have lost it. They just never learned how to adjust to the PC market.

 

[Jeff7181]

No wonder their computers that are worth more than the plastic they're enclosed in are $3,000... useless TV advertising, and declining sales.

 

[Pocatello]

I'm sure diehard Mac fans will be diehard Mac fans until they die, but who will replace them?

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Pocatello
I'm sure diehard Mac fans will be diehard Mac fans until they die, but who will replace them?

True... Apple needs to make an OS that runs software written for Windows without a hitch... then maybe people will migrate.

 

[Cadaver]

I'm both a Mac and PC user... and I've become quite bored with the Macintosh world as of late.

Other than Quark (which I have absolutely no use for), I've found very few exciting apps that I'd be interested in using/buying. Apple made a big deal about iChatAV, which I'll admit is a nice app, but only serves to catch-up Mac users to the same level of audio/video conferencing that PC users have enjoyed since video was added to NetMeeting/Windows Messenger. The advantages of the MacOS used to be very clear (trouble-free OS, careful and consistent software design). But with WindowsXP plus PC software developers paying more attention to good interface design, the Mac advantage is becoming less apparent.

Now, in Apple's defense, they make some of the slickest technology around. Apple's Airport, when matted with a capable Mac, is nearly zero-config networking. Apple's hardware and MacOS X, I've found, are even more stable than the carefully configured NT boxes at work. And to this day, the MacOS and it's apps still have the most consistent interface around.

That said, I can't help but think of a line from the movie "Other People's Money" uttered by Danny Devito - something to the effect of:
"Buggy whips. Since the invention of the car, few people need buggy whips. But, you can bet that the last company making buggy whips made the best damned buggy whips you ever saw."

I do hope that the G5 can bring some rebound to the Mac platform... It looks like a fantastic machine - even if it's not THE fastest personal computer, it looks to be damn fast no matter what. Thing is, I feel no desire to buy one (at $3K) since upgrading my PC's mobo/processor (for less than $300) a few months ago (a nice machine, see link in my sig). My PC is now damn fast compared to most, and does everything I need at this point.

It certainly wont hurt Microsoft any even if Apple doubled its market share. I'm cautiously optimistic about the Mac platform, but then again I haven't needed to use my Mac in over a month. Hmmm.

[edit - bad spelling and typos]

 

[tart666]

the mac "user share" could be a lot higher than their quoted "market share" of 2%, considering average PC user has 5 PC's (since they are so cheap)

Now when all mac users do go to upgrade, perhaps Apple actually will have some profit in that quarter... IMO, Apple should stay alive, at least to give MS ideas on UI direction.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: tart666
the mac "user share" could be a lot higher than their quoted "market share" of 2%, considering average PC user has 5 PC's (since they are so cheap)

Now when all mac users do go to upgrade, perhaps Apple actually will have some profit in that quarter... IMO, Apple should stay alive, at least to give MS ideas on UI direction.

I just wish Apple created more competition for MS. Mac users will be Mac users, and PC users will be PC users. apple needs to find a way to convert some PC users to Mac. Like lowering prices, getting more software for the Mac platform, and my personal opinion... ditch the cheese grater case of the G5.

 

[vetteguy]

As long as they continue to make a niche product, they will have a niche market share. You've got people like Jobs who are so anti-Windows that they want to make their product as "unMicrosoft" as possible, and yet somehow try to not only rival but surpass the Windows market segment. Not going to happen. It's like the old analogy of making a car that gets 1000 miles to the gallon, never breaks down, and requires no special skill to operate it, but you can only drive it on 1% of the roads.

 

[Eug]

Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised for Apple for these numbers. Considering their Power Mac sales sucked so bad (because the G4 was to slow for a top-of-the-line desktop and because the everyone knew the G5 was coming), I expected a slight dip overall in marketshare. However, what happened was they maintained the same level essentially, and achieved a higher than expected profit. That bodes well, esp. considering that Apple WILL have tons of orders of the G5. (The dual 2.0 has gotten tons of preorders.) By the way, I was in a store on the Saturday before the dual G5 announcement. One woman was getting her dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac order rung up as I was checking out the iPod. I felt like smacking her upside the head and saying "Don't you know the dual G5 is being announced in TWO DAYS?" But I didn't...

BTW, here is a Unix switcher thread. And some Unix guys are the sysadmins and sometimes even volume hardware purchasers... Hmmm...

Apple made a big deal about iChatAV, which I'll admit is a nice app, but only serves to catch-up Mac users to the same level of audio/video conferencing that PC users have enjoyed since video was added to NetMeeting/Windows Messenger.

I haven't used it myself, but the reviews say that iChat AV "blows away the competition". Actually, I've used the audio part of iChat AV and it indeed does rock.

It's like the old analogy of making a car that gets 1000 miles to the gallon, never breaks down, and requires no special skill to operate it, but you can only drive it on 1% of the roads.

By the way, my Prius gets 500 miles to the tank (<12 US gallons), requires no special skill to operate it, works on any road, but has a max speed of "only" 100 mph.