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HP and Apple Separate; Apple gets Custody
Kasracer writes "Yesterday, The Register reported that HP separated from Apple's iPod selling agreement. 'Doing its best to erase Carly Fiorina's mistakes, HP has culled an iPod reselling agreement in place with Apple since January of 2004.' It is unclear whether or not HP will create an mp3 player or partner with another computer to fill the void."
or did I miss the point of the partnership in the first place?
[optikshell.com] My weblog / gathering of neat (read geek) stuff.
I think Godwin needs to come up with another law, the one that says at some point in a discussion, someone will find a way to point the finger of blame at Microsoft.
Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to engage their creative forces and reinforce their "Invent" slogan?
yup, using cryptic model names is bad for business as far as I'm concerned. Do people go into a store and ask for an iPod or a Sony NW-HD5? An iMac or a Sony VGC-RB42G? Keep it simple, folks.
Don't make me laugh. Sony pre-announced the VAIO Pocket over one year ago. In that time, Apple has sold, what, something like 18 million plus iPods?
3Q2005 iPod sales ~= 6.2 million units
2Q2005 iPod sales ~= 5.3 million units
1Q2005 iPod sales ~= 4.5 million units
4Q2004 iPod sales ~= 2.0 million units
3Q2004 iPod sales ~= 0.86 million units
Do Mr. Robinson and The Register seriously think that the VAIO Pocket is going to "kill" a product line which has sold nearly 20 million units just in the time since Sony pre-announced the VAIO Pocket? Never mind what the rest of the world has already said concerning the viability of the VAIO Pocket...
Apple isn't stitting in Cupertino on their hands, I'm certain.
Having sold many many many ipods, I noticed an interesting trend where most buyers, including Windows users, preferred to buy the Apple branded iPod over the HP one.
Many customers went so far as ordering an out of stock Apple version instead of buying the in-stock HP ipod - Last Christmas season we quiickly sold out of Apple iPods and only then did the HP units start to move.
Technically the only real difference between the two is that Apple provides support for only the Apple branded ones, same with HP & their model. Many customers were not aware of that, so I think that the Apple brand itself was the draw.
Carly Fiorina was their mistake. I hate that woman. She ruined one of the most respectable companies in engineering. It's not just the calculators. HP used to be synonymous with quality in instrumentation. That's what Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started doing in their garage fer cryin' out loud! Now that's been spun off (how can you buy an instrument named "Agilent" with a straight face), the Australian Calculator Division is closed, THEY MERGED WITH FRIGGIN' COMPAQ, MAKERS OF THE CRAPPIEST COMPUTERS SINCE PACKARD BELL, and the HP brand means nothing more than "Mediocre PCs." Honestly, does she go and piss on their graves every week too? Is she sleeping with Satan? What's up with that woman?
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
No, Microsoft currently doesn't have anything to compete against the iPod.
Microsoft is not concerned about the physical player per se, but every iPod that's sold means there's one more person who won't be buying music from an online store that uses Windows Media format. So Microsoft does have something to lose.
Just the fact that Apple and MS are market rivals doesn't mean that MS would try to threaten a company like HP from promoting Apple products.
What are you talking about? They've already done that! Years ago, when PC makers started trying to bundle Netscape Navigator, Microsoft pressured them to stop with threats like increasing the price they paid for Windows, or revoking their Windows distribution license entirely.
It's not really likely that MS threatened HP in this case, but MS is certainly no stranger to such behavior (Read from paragraph 230 in the above link).
~Philly
Clearly that demographic isn't important to Apple sales. The HP branded iPods only accounted for 5% of total iPod sales each quarter. Wal-Mart can push cheap household goods, but not the iPod.
I mean there has to be some rational reason for this
I've worked for 2 fortune 500 companies, and no, there often is no logic to these deals. My suspicion is that most of them get done in the club house after a round or two of golf and some cocktails.
It was so bad that when we had ideas to make things run smoother the catch phrase was 'That would make sense'. Meaning, good idea, it would probably work and save the company a ton of money but either management will refuse to consider it or if they try to implement it they will screw it up so bad your name will be mud and your career at the company essentially would be over.
See Dilbert for more insights...
HTH
HAND
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+