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"Market Share" "Installed Base" and Consumer Electronics
redrum writes "Analysts and reporters like to talk about market share statistics, but the conclusions they draw are often misleading, RDM reports. Market Share Myth 2007: iPod vs Zune and Mac vs PC takes a look at how numbers are used to paint grossly inaccurate portrayals of the market share of the Zune among iPods, and alternatively the Mac among PCs. A follow up article, Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC demonstrates how the conventional wisdom of market share reporting can be turned upside down by simply comparing what vendors actually sell. An eye opening, in depth look at the real numbers behind PCs, music players, and console games."
Sorry guys, the "Pro-Microsoft Press" is as much a straw-man shibboleth as "Main Stream Media's Liberal Bias". Give me a break!
How many analysts out there saw the Zunes Microsoft unveiled last fall and actually predicted a success? I'm sorry, I call BS, along with the claim that the iPod created the market for HD-based players. HD-players existed long before the iPod, and anyone who remembers the lawsuits involving the Diamond Rio knows that the path to iPod's success was oiled with the blood of its competition.
I'm not saying the iPod didn't create a huge demand, and grab a large part of the exploding market, but let's not exaggerate things here.
Put another way, do we really need a pro-mac blog to provide a multi-part essay on why the Zune is not a success? I mean, this thing is as much a dog as the Apple ROKR!
... who thinks that this makes very little difference? Surely it's all the same to companies. I guess the only reason this sort of metric would be useful would be looking at how popular versions of your product are.
Could not open
During the 1980s, the computer trade press ran top-forty-like software sales ranking charts. About a year after the release of Lotus 1-2-3, it occupied #1 slot and did so, regularly as clockwork, month after month. It became a unchallenged truism that 1-2-3 was the best-selling software title, perhaps of all time.
Gradually, it transpired that this simply wasn't true. The best-selling software title was, in fact, AppleWorks, a spreadsheet/word processor/"database" for the Apple II line.
What had happened was very simple. Apple sold AppleWorks directly. The only place you could buy it off the shelf (which at that time was still an important sales channel) was at an Apple dealer. That AppleWorks outsold 1-2-3 should not have been much of a surprise, because it was much cheaper, and because Apple dealers frequently included in it attractively-priced bundles.
But of the published figures were based on sales by Corporate Software, Incorporated. Since AppleWorks was never sold by Corporate Software or any other third party, it was literally off the charts.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Or lack thereof.
I'd like to see this become required for all those choosing to write in the field of tech journalism, be they pundits, journalists, bloggers, thinktank members or any other name.
:-) ]
[ The examples were fun, too - Microsoft, Walmart, RIAA and the 70s? I thought "one of these things is not like the others"
Where does linux, *BSD and Solaris/x86 come in this picture? Tracking software popularity on the basis of hardware sales are very absurd. You cannot attributeevery sale of a PC to windows. I agree that the alternate market may pale in comparison, but there has to a good 1 or 2% of computers running linux.
Also, the luxury segment in the computer industry is the server, and window's/OSX's share isn't worth mentioning. In fact, the more higher end you go, it all starts moving away from the x86 market. The sales numbers there will questionable, but the profit margins aren't.
Nevertheless, TFA is a very interesting read.
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
Ever wonder why DELL et al so happily pander to Microsoft, rather than bundling a free OS? Because as the article points out, Windows' pricing structure and compounded bloat compells people who use Windows to upgrade their computer, rather than upgrade their operating system. The result is that millions of otherwise perfectly good PC's end up in landfills. Both consumers and the environment are being raped to feed the appetite of corporate greed. Shame.
You're not going to get rid of the pop music & network television are you ?
I don't think you realize how long it took to get that automated babysitter working like it does.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
That AppleWorks outsold 1-2-3 should not have been much of a surprise, because it was much cheaper, and because Apple dealers frequently included in it attractively-priced bundles.
This qualifies AppleWorks as being one of the most distributed pieces of software, but doesn't really qualify it as being one of the most sold pieces of software. For something to be "sold", it must be "bought"; and for something to be "bought", there must be a deliberate action ("hey, I want that"), not just a grudging acceptance ("in order to get X, which I want, I have to agree to have Y and Z, which are utterly useless garbage").
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
If you look back at RoughlyDrafted, the entire site is dedicated to either stating the obvious or to "debunking" things that are actually true. If anything you read on RoughlyDrafted is valuable to you, it means you're REALLY out of the loop.
E pluribus unum
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The most interesting part of both articles was:
====
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple's 2% of the PC market doesn't seem so small anymore.
Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft's total $3.4 billion in profit.
====
Now, I don't know why he chose only the fourth quarter, but it's going to make me go back and look at the numbers for 2004-2006, because if that's a trend it's a very interesting one.
Paul
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Usually, I read /. for the comments. But in that case (ok, I'm an Apple satisfied customer), reading the whole entries is really worthed. FTA: "Clearly, market share is meaningless taken out of context, and anyone insisting that market share "speaks for itself" probably has good reason to avoid explaining things." In our fast pace life, to understand the big picture, we must take time to learn about the context of events...
Animoog.org
A low power chip, solid state storage and 2D graphics are all I need for desktop use. Servers are usually built for optimal I/O, if your desktop applications are largely I/O bound then they may be perfectly suited. I've also used old desktops as servers and built dedicated rackmount A/V workstations from server boards.
The typical desktop is a jack-of-all-trades, it's not the right tool for any particular job. In this context, it makes little sense when you say that server hardware is "not right tool for the task" without defining what that task is.
"How exactly are you changing the world by posting vitriolic?"
By his tone, I suspect he thinks he is changing the world by maintaining a VB/ASP front-end to a decrepit payroll mainframe application written in COBOL
Followed by:
If you want to get a good idea of how well a company is doing with its products, look at its financial statements over a long period of time and compare them to "like" competitors. Market cap, P/E ratio's, the number of shorts, placements of put's/call's on a stock, and other metrics should all be taken into consideration.
Statistics can make a lot of things seem different than they are. For instance, someone is killed by a falling coconut every 2 days. So you should put helmets on your kids and keep them indoors.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
There is a debate here?
I read an Apple commercial framed in the recontextualizing of sales data to refute an imaginary horde of straw man analysts. It's all a conspiracy, man, designed to keep Steve Jobs down!
The sugar water, changing the world reference might be too subtle for the johnny come lately Mac user, but it refers to the hypocrite nature of Apple, a hardware company positioned as the single largest platform for distributing digital media, who locks down its devices so that only they may sell content for those devices, while promoting the image that they are empowering users with superior software and literally changing the world.
Apple had 10% of the laptops sales he says. Later he implies this is 10% of the units. Since iBooks cost more than Windows laptops, one does not follow the other.
He says OEMs pay 1/10 of retail price for MS Windows. AFIAK, OEMs pay about $40 for XP Home. Retail price is $199. Not $29 vs $299 as he states.
He talks about increasing Apple sales in the immediate future meaning increased market share. He fails to think that there may be increased overall computer sales and therefore market share could go up, down, or remain the same.
There are plenty more logical and factual errors, and made up shit.
Sorry guys, the "Pro-Microsoft Press" is as much a straw-man shibboleth as "Main Stream Media's Liberal Bias". Give me a break! How many analysts out there saw the Zunes Microsoft unveiled last fall and actually predicted a success?
Shibboleth, I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Straw man, I understand but did not see one in the article. They were careful to attribute the source of pro-Zune/M$ buzz to several very misleading stories by NPD and Steve Ballmer. They then flay those stories to show how they are misleading.
do we really need a pro-mac blog to provide a multi-part essay on why the Zune is not a success?
Sure, Zune tanked but that's in part because of bloggers tweezing reality from BS. Microsoft made a second rate device and tried to push it as "the best ever" and likely to succeed because of M$'s usual market might. When it did not sell because everyone knew it was a turd, they made up numbers to say it was selling. Because of the net, Zune has the reputation and sales it deserves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Can we please have an own category for roughly drafted stories?
They are sometimes interesting but for the most part I would like to ignore them for being outright false and so strongly biased that they smell like rotten apple for miles.
Old article on Slashdot:
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/05/06/05/0548225.s html?tid=3
Summary: Software Publisher's Association and other groups estimated in 2005 that 16% of all computer users were on Macs.
* * * *
All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.
--Jane Wagner
The last PC I saw set out for pick-up was a 486 Packard Bell. PCs migrate from den to bedroom to basement...
Windows users upgrade hardware and software together at OEM pricing. Upgrading the OS alone doesn't give you a system that can play Oblivion.
That "however" doesn't just make any sense. In terms of marketshare of computers, Apple is tiny. How does saying that the PC market is a subset of a larger market have any impact on the truthfullness of the previous paragraph? All that means is that the Mac's tiny slice of the market looks even smaller when you incorporate consumer electronics into your definition of the market.
It seems obvious that he picked the 4th quarter because Apple had a revenue spike.
Microsoft's Balance Sheet vs. Apple's Balance Sheet
It would appear that over the last five years Microsoft (profit over 5 years: ~$50B) has consistently made quite a bit more money than Apple (~$3.7B) has (and profits at both companies are growing quickly).
I guess his point is that Apple's making money and selling stuff. Which is nice for them, but that's what companies are supposed to do.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Get a life. We were just commenting for fun about these products. The Zune has no feelings and the iPod is much better. This wasn't meant to change the world, or prove our independence from pop culture (since, of course, we aren't Real Men if we don't publicly denounce pop culture).
Look, just get a life, OK?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The article is intresting enough although you really get the feeling this guy is a major mac fan and a zune hater, but that is alright, doesn't mean he doesn't have a point.
He however then goes on to claim that installed base is everything and that Apple's installed base for computer market is 8%
While a 2% share of the entire worlds PCs wouldnt suggest much of a reason to target Macs for software development, having 8% of the active US installed base certainly does.
He then goes on with this:
Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer markets installed base, where Apple choses to compete.
Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.
While Apple may be a success this just doesn't make sense. Granted I am from holland and so have no way of knowing how the situation over there is BUT here at least 1 out of 10 business pc's is most certainly NOT a mac. Not any company I have visited except artistic places and they hardly count because of their size.
If you claim such a high percentage of installed base you better explain to me why I never ever see them. There are Apples out there but they are single machines surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of Dells, HP's, Compaqs and even IBM's. Are the mac's perhaps up in the boardroom with a hundred machines for every director?
That is not his only mistake.
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsofts $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, thats right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apples 2% of the PC market doesnt seem so small anymore.
I just read several articles on the site claiming that statisitcs are mis-represented comparing useless figures against equally useless figures that do not even correspond.
Simple fact, MS is a software company dabbling in everything from servers to games. Apple on the other hand produces mainly a desktop OS, some tools for that OS BUT is mainly a PC maker. Apple is if you like Dell and MS rolled into one with a bit shaved off the sides (Dells server market and MS games division). This is not helped by the fact that you might use a MS mouse with a Mac and use MS office on OS-X. For that matter how do you count that story about a university going to Apple for its hardware and using dualbooting into windows? Is Apple the box shifter and MS the OS seller if people end up only running windows on Mac hardware?
Comparing their sales is therefore extremely silly. MS is dependant on Dell for its sales and it is Dell that takes the majority of the sales figure for each new PC sold. Yes the MS tax is high but not even close to the major part of the costs of a new PC.
If you could only get new Windows PC's with MS hardware just how fucking high would MS figures be? Well simply add up the sales of the windows PC segments of Dell IBM HP and the countless other Windows PC makers out there. I think the total Windows + Hardware sales figure would make Apples OS-X + Hardware sales figure seem an awfull lot smaller.
It is NOT that his point about the meaningless nature of certain sales figures that is wrong, what is wrong that he then does exactly the same thing by comparing the sales figures of two totally different companies.
Oh and if there is one company that absolutely believes in sales figures it is Apple, they LIVE by the acceptance that reported marketshare is everything. If they did NOT, they would have iTunes for linux or even more so, iTunes the OS neutral edition. Instead they
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's possible a PC may cost more than a Mac to maintain, but 5 times more? I work in design, so I've been around both Macs and PCs in a professional environment for quite a few years now. In that period of time our Macs have been replaced far more often than PCs. In the 8 years I worked with this one company Macs were replaced 5 times. They started with old Power PCs, moved on to first generation iMacs, hoping to save some money. Those were replaced in about a year by G3s, then came 2 generations of G4s and most recently Intel-based Macs.
In that same period of time the PCs have been replaced 2 to 3 times. The first upgrade in the same period of time was for IBM machines. Maybe 3 or 4 years later they were replaced by Dells and some of those were replaced by more recent Dell machines. Interestingly there are still a handful of those old Machines around the office being used, not on a regular basis, but they're around. The old Macs are all long gone.
I suppose on a per machine basis a Mac is cheaper. Macs aren't held onto as long and they aren't really upgraded. Many of the PCs in the office saw at least one OS upgrade, at first from Windows NT to 2000, and then to XP.
In the design industry, which is one of the biggest users of Macs, this is quite common. Design companies replace their machines quite often. They often have no choice, and for exactly the problems that article claims afflict PCs.
Apple doesn't extent any support for old systems. It doesn't offer any support for any old products. Once an Apple product has been replaced by a new model you're out of luck. Of course, there's a good support community out there for older Apple devices, but Apple can't take credit for that. Anyone running OSX 10.3 or older wont be getting any updates any time soon.
Older Macs don't run more recent versions of Mac OSX very well. I've experienced this first hand. Even a 3 year old Mac can have difficulty running OSX 10.4 consistently well. A 3 or 4 year old PC can handle XP with no problems at all. Vista is the exception. But then Macs had similar problems when OSX was released.
And then there are the countless times I've been unable to run applications because they were coded for a more recent version of OSX than I was running. And I don't get backwards compatibility people claim Windows lacks and Macs support.
Even with the OS9 environment in OSX old applications don't necessarily run, and that's assuming that environment is even installed. In Windows I can even run many DOS-era applications.
Old Macs are difficult to maintain without the afore mentioned Apple community. Old PCs are exceedingly easy to maintain and similar support communities exist. And why is resale important? I can't think of anyone who's ever sold an old computer. I've seen a lot more interest in old PCs than old Macs which nobody wants if they're 4 or 5 years old. I believe, however, that PCs have a low resale value. PCs are much cheaper than Macs, why spend the money on an old PC when for not too much money a person can buy a new one.
The article also puts forward a few assumptions they can't really prove. One more absurd one being that most PC users will go out and buy a new PC instead of having the current one services. I'
You should consider donating that "perfectly good" computer to a project that can use it rather than letting it waste away in the closet. I know aliveinbaghdad.org needs equipment for video editing work, and many other not-for-profit groups could use one too.
"Market research numbers are BS that can be, and often are, manipulated by analysts to say what every the analyst wants, and here is how!"
Yes. He makes that point quite effectively by manipulating research numbers to make his own outlandish and bogus claims.
I'm guessing you mean hypocritical rather than hypocrite, but I'm not sure because I can't see a conflict between those two statements...
the single largest platform for distributing digital media, who locks down its devices so that only they may sell content for those devices.
- Well, not quite, you can load media from just about anywhere onto 'those devices' (assuming you mean ipods). They also have their own source (iTMS) that *does* only work with iPods, but hey - that's the same as all their competitors, and why shouldn't they offer that additional service ?
while promoting the image that they are empowering users with superior software and literally changing the world.
- The software that every Mac comes with does indeed genuinely add value to the average person's computing experience. The whole "changing the world" thing is more about letting people who *aren't* technical (and here I usually envisage my sister) getting more out of their computers, by employing good design, and paying attention to details that others overlook.
To give the traditional anecdotal "evidence", my sister flew into florida, found an open WiFi network at the airport, and video-conferenced me (using iChat) here in CA, all with the standard s/w that comes with the machine. Her boyfriend bought her a PC notebook for her birthday last year (in October). When I mentioned (close to Xmas) that that was a shame, because I had been going to buy her a Macbook, she said "oh, no, please get me the Macbook. One of my friends has one, and it's so much easier to use than mine". One Macbook (and somewhat annoyed boyfriend
We've even done a 3-way chat (her in Germany, my parents in the UK, and me in CA), which was pretty cool... so I dunno about changing the world in general - that's a nice goal. It certainly changed *her* world, and for the better.
So, even if both of your premises were true (the first isn't, as explained above), I can't see why Apple should be "hypocrite"; the two statements simply don't have any bearing on each other.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
While he states that Apple's computer sales were taken out of context when compared to the entire market, he makes no effort to put them in context compared to other companies/products. He only later compares them against themselves showing that they stayed the same for a few years then increased a bit. If you're going to tell me that the way everyone compare's Apple's computer sales to the market or other companies is wrong, you should also tell me the right way to compare them.
Hey man. No Offense, rigth? The Mac Vs PC. ads were not directed at you, I swear! It was not personal, man!
And I am pretty sure sooner or later you'll find a girl that appreciates fishing on the weekends and will not care about your 60's nerd style clothes.
"redrum" would appear to be Daniel Eran, the owner of roughlydrafted.com. The people over on digg.com have accused him of spamming Digg with his articles and then using sockpuppet accounts to 'digg' his stories (and only his stories) to get them on the frontpage (or however it works on Digg). When this was found out, he was banned from Digg and he took this personally. In his deluded mind this is a conspiracy against Apple by pro-Microsoft minions. He even has people email Apple asking them to set up a "pro-Apple" competitor to Digg. Daniel Eran is a sycophantic Apple fanboy of the worst kind.
What instead is the case is this, a quality machine will last longer then a crap one. Shocker no?
But that is what the article is claiming, that a 2000 dollar Mac will outlast a 500 dollar Dell. Well, that is a suprise?
If you compare expensive Mac's with expensive PC's you might see a difference but basically all this says is that quality pays for itself. Well, I be damned.
To be honest he talks about technical lifespan NOT usefullness lifespan, be honest, did your designers REALLY need to upgrade their Mac OR did they just want too?
And if I had an IBM machine I wouldn't upgrade it either out of fear the upgrade would turn out to be a Dell.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think what he's trying to say is that the actions MS are taking right now to increase their revenue are not as effective as the ones Apple are taking.
/. has a really crappy interface for formatted text, and <ecode doesn't cut it :-(
MS are, and have been for a decade or so (as you point out), vastly more profitable than Apple. That's not in dispute. A large part of that profitability comes from their own inertia, however. The fact that they *are* the massively-dominant market leader itself propogates that position, meaning they get "money for nothing" as people migrate to the market leader.
To maintain the market lead, however, you still have to put in effort. If you sit back on your laurels, you will eventually be overtaken. I *think* the point of his article is that MS aren't doing as much to maintain their lead, as Apple are to try and catch up. Looking at the net incomes for both companies over the last 6 years:
Year Apple MS
2006 1,989 12,600
2005 1,328 12,250
2004 266 8,168
2003 69 7,531
2002 65 5,355
2001 -25 7,346
(Apologies for the formatting,
So, the inertia is still strongly (vastly!) with MS, but if the current trends continue, Apple are *improving* at a far greater rate than MS are. Note, that I'm not defending this position, it's just how I see his argument.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
From the first article: Uh... Considering the article concerns (simple) analysis of numbers and statistics, the author should be able to wrap his mind around this relatively simple situation.
Also: is actually an impressively good argument to start out the article, but the author seems to think it only holds true when the analogous "BMW" is Apple. Later, Ballmer (Granted, Ballmer's comments did make no sense, but the author could have chosen better criticisms. I mean, come on, Ballmer's a gold mine for any MS critic.) was attacked for attempting to use sales percentages for the Zune from only a select segment of the market. The author refused to narrow the market for the Zune, but insisted on narrowing it for the Mac. It does seem that the upper end of the market is where the Zune was meant to compete, and its numbers there might be ever-so-slightly better.
The second article was more even-handed and it made really good points, but the author could have written a completely unbiased article with the same data and been more convincing about it. For example, why kick the Zune while it's down? Well, yeah, it was a pretty low goal. Why poke fun at low expectations? Pointing out that there's no way the Zune can achieve that goal would be OK, but it's just unnecessary to make fun of the goal itself. Besides, the idea was to start out small, to make the Zune vs. iPod competition the new David vs. Goliath. Of course, in this case, David is without a sling. Or a rock.
I don't know that almost decade of mac ownership makes me a 'johnny come lately' mac user. (I indicated that one of the machines I own shipped with OS 8, which was last shipped in 1999) I understood the sugar water reference, usually refered to as "cool-aide" (I'm assuming you changed the reference just to be different). The changing the world thing was what threw me off. Apple hasn't claimed that it would change the world since the 1984 ad introducing the mac. It seems to me that you've been actively hating apple since at least the mid 80's, and can't possibly give the companies products the benefit of the doubt. Based upon your continued vehemnce, it appears to me that further discussion with you will be unfruitful, because no matter what I say you'll take it as me having "drunk the sugar-water" despite my having used PC's for the decade prior to my change to a mac. I prefer apples products, and I think that market analysts are profesional BS artists. Neither of those statements should be taken as an insult, and I wish you a good day.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I'm done.
You just agreed with me and the author of the article. Take a closer look at the preceeding posts. I think you are arguing becuase you don't like apple or anyone saying anything nice about them.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Two articles in the same issue of the same trade rag saying pretty much the exact same thing, yet the Microsoft article got a title emphasizing the positive, while the IBM article got a title emphasizing the negative. I couldn't believe it when I first heard it, but I pulled out my copy of the magazine and sure enough it was true. There is a bias among the media out there. It may not be deliberate or even pervasive, but it's definitely there. (Granted Apple may benefit as much if not more from a pro-Apple bias.)
Drinking the Kool-aid refers to a cult whose leader had them drink the poisoned kool-aid and they died. Drinking the Kool-aid means that you believe in the leader on faith, originally from the phrase "don't drink the kool-aid" from the Jonestown masacre.
Sugar-water is Apple specific. When Jobs lured John Sculley from Pepsi, Jobs asked Sculley, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"
Hence the Sugar Water and "Change the World" quotes are Apple quotes, and have nothing to do with the Kool-aid quote you are referring to.
Random kid with fanatical Mac blog posts diatribe on how Apple's perceived market share makes them appear smaller than they really are, dresses it up with pretty pie charts, uses a few sound-bites, and ends up on the front page? Seriously, why do people care that a company isn't perceived as well as they think it should be? This whole debate is a playground pissing contest perpetuated by immature people who can't tolerate any sort of alternatives to their own narrow views.
"In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue."
Someone discovered the secret of time travel.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If you're getting into the retail computer business, then you want to know market share.
:)
If you're getting into the software development business, then you want to know installed base.
If you're getting into marketing or blogging, then you want o know both so you can pick the one that supports your argument.
Apple sells hardware and software. MS sells mostly software. Comparing their income is a bit skewed, but still quite revealing especially when you consider that Apple turned around some years ago with a low of 2 billion in yearly revenue.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Roughly Drafted has had a madman's war with the Zune since its announcement. Look through the archives of this blog, it's like an anti-Microsoft/pro-Apple Mein Kampf. Why do we keep treating this as fact? The Zune is just a (actually fairly-decent) MP3 player... why has it generated such a massive battery of fanatical FUD? The fact that the Zune had so much rambling consumer backlash from Apple-fans will actually help sell them to anti-scenesters.
Here's a viral/word-of-mouth marketing standpoint-
There's been a trend lately with teenage boys, high-schoolers, purchasing Zune's instead of iPod's. Why? Because they're more straight-forward functional and masculine, but have the same Scene-feeling. It doesn't take a marketing rocket scientist to figure out that iPod's are sort of effeminate. What Microsoft has is a solid product that will slowly ride into the mainstream on the shoulders of masculine insecurity. All it takes is a couple generations, focus, and patience. The Zune instantly gobbled up a chunk of the market share on pure 'wtf'- I imagine that as long as the Xbox camp is behind this product, they'll gain market share continuously over the next several years and product revisions.
My standpoint:
A couple weeks ago, I rode a train for a few hours, watching episodes of The Office on my Zune- I can even watch anime because the screens so clear I can read subtitles. I carry it with me every day and listen to it quite frequently on long walks and runs. The thought of getting an iPod instead never crosses my mind, especially since I make full use of the Zune Pass for subscription music- I couldn't afford it. I purchase all my music in non-DRM MP3 from Bleep.com and rent music from Zune. So, I guess that would make it a Consumer Product, not a satanic cancer.
"All your installed base are belong to us."
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
...the first iPod sucked... The first iPod didn't even slightly suck. It was one of the coolest, most useful gadgets I ever got. Worked like a charm, incl. the mechanical scroll wheel, which had a great feel and was perfectly reliable as long as I owned the iPod. The first iPod was revolutionary, because of its size and its ease-of-use. I had owned a Nomad Jukebox HD player before it, and the difference was beyond night & day....95% of the folks buying computers could give a rat's ass if they can play Oblivion. What they need is a computer that can keep pace with standards, so they can communicate with their friends, family, and coworkers. That has nothing to do with CPU horsepower, and everything to do with staying on the upgrade treadmill.
Sadly, I actually read both articles linked.
I know this is a time when bloggers think what they say is important, but these articles were just bloody awful.
Not only does the article contradict itself over and over, the facts it proposes are so out of touch with reality it is scary that people can make themselves believe what they are writing.
Maybe if they spent more time on fact checking rather than making the conclusion fit their ideas, it might have been at least less painful to read.
As other have noted, even the earning numbers from MS and Apple were not only wrong, but so misleading it is in the realm of hyperbole. Not only are the numbers wrong, but they fail to mention 'little' things like the R&D that tends to define a company's market viability and future progression. MS spent more on R&D than Apple made in the last year. And this is R&D money that is for not used in any product development.
Also who in their right mind EVER said the Zune would kill the iPod? Even Apple is having problems selling new iPods because of their own market saturation. It would take years for any company to replace a vast installed user base like this.
Shall we even comment on how the article confuses the Zune with the MS PlaysforSure program? Zune is not a PlaysforSure device, it is something completely different. In the PlaysforSure world, there are a lot of popular devices like the Creative Zen M that do rather well for people that want features over the iPod name.
And the article does briefly mention the iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but then goes on and on how Apple made it fit the market and why it is so great. Then in later paragraphs, the same freaking article talks about how computers introduced into new markets didn't give Apple a surge since they were not Apple markets.
So which is it, a company is good for making their product successful and expanding a market or the numbers don't matter because the new market didn't fit the company as it tries to illustrate with PCs? (This is where the author needs a reality smack upside the head.)
I personally don't care that Creative and iRiver were around a long time before iPod, and Apple basically beat them with a great marketing team, but don't give Apple a handicap in the computer world because they failed to do the very same thing when it comes to PCs.
The only thing this article proves and instills is that Apple is good at selling their products to a technically unaware audience. That is why the 'First 64bit' and other goofy claims from Apple never worked well in the computer world.
Even today, if you want a FAST computer or a FAST laptop, Apple is NOT the brand to buy. The hardware is middle of the road, and OSX is not well known for performance in any areas. However for people that know little about technology, they will continue to pick up users, just as they did with the iPod.
In the computer world the IT and decision makers and even most home users are more in touch with the technology than Apple realizes; hence why they continue to push a computer for the non-technical crowd in a market that is dominated by technical people, and it doesn't work as well as they expect, even if their marketing is better than their products.
Oh, and the claim that Apple OSX 10.4 still runs on 1997 hardware (FTA), this was not only scary but very laughable. Many of the 1997 Macs don't have DVDs, don't even have the ability to have 256-512mb of RAM. So sure in theory it supports a G3, but that doesn't mean it works, or works well.
Vista can run just fine on computers from the same timeframe if you can find one that supports 256-512mb of RAM, there is no difference here.
So since this is an OSS advocacy news site, any word on when we will stop putting up non-credible pro Apple articles? Apple is kind of on the other end of the spectrum from OSS, in fact a bit beyond even MS.
Maybe I should submit a bunch of MS opinion articles, I'm sure they will be accepted. Oh wait,
Face it: Most of us will change the world as much as a rat fart in the wind. We may as well drink the sugar water and watch the network TV if we like it; it's not going to make a bit of difference to the world.
Fault?
Only if there was some reason for Apple to care about this.
As far as I know, Apple never so much as wrote any letters to the trade publications asking for corrections, or ran ads trumpeting it as the best-selling software package or anything like that. If they didn't even want to do that, why on earth would they revamp their distribution channels just to change a number that someone else was calculating in an irresponsible and faulty way?
This was during the days when Apple supported its independent dealer network pretty strongly, and I think it's very likely that their dealer network liked being the sole channel for AppleWorks and probably would have gotten pissed off if Apple had made it available through (say) Corporate Software. Which probably wouldn't have sold many to its customers anyway, as they were predominantly big corporations and Apple was mostly selling to individual consumers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Alluring alliteration amusing. Microsoft manager mauled mightily. Assaulted sausage seeks safety.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
RDM is run by people who would gladly have Steve Jobs cum on their faces, then lick each other off. And redrum's real name is eatcum.
First of all, I remember seeing many instances where Apple manipulates market share figures. One example is their misrepresentation of the relative desktop usage of Macintosh and Linux, in particular in education. So, my heart doesn't exactly bleed for them if others do the same to them.
Furthermore, whatever Apple's marketshare may be, we have to ask whether that's even an interesting number. I have a couple of Macs. What do I do with them? I run Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium, OpenOffice, VLC, DVDplayer, iTunes, and TeX. I suspect that's pretty typical for many Mac users. I can run the same applications on other platforms; nothing really ties me to Macintosh. Even if you use Safari and Apple Mail, there's nothing really Mac specific about those.
In fact, as we move to free, open source, cross-platform applications, the concept of "market share" of particular manufacturers becomes less important. An increasing Apple market share these days doesn't mean success for OS X, it merely means that people like the MacMini and the MacBook hardware.
I can't tell if you are serious or not, but you are right when you say:
Thank god someone has finally stepped up and debunked Ballmer's overzealous claims regarding the Zune's success!! Someone has GOT to keep the media in line after all.
I agree, people should hear what's true because lies have consequences. You might remember many news outlets copying his wild claims of 20 to 25% market share for December. Roughly Drafted shows how that's orders of magnitude off unless you restricted the "market" to some really twisted definition of 30GB players in brown plastic or some other nonsense. Lot's of really sloppy or bought reporting got that figure out to people who were considering a new music player at a critical season. If it were not for the utter suck of the Zune, people might have been herded into a "safe bet" purchase. M$ had no such luck and Zune is sitting on shelves, where it belongs but a large segment of the press let the public down on the issue.
The lies were too little to late and too much too soon. Even a if M$ did grab a 20% share of the HD player market for a month, the Zune would be no better a bet than the Dell Jukebox was. No one really wants a subscription service that only works on a single device, which is why 90% of the world's music is still sold on CD. Next year, people are going to remember being lied to and continue to avoid Zune. More importantly, reporters might remember it and not repeat the next batch.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
- PROOF that Roughly Drafted is SPAMMING/Gaming Digg with multiple accounts (97 diggs)
Photographic evidence of AlexaW and RoughlyDrafted gaming Digg just to get moron Daniel Eran's articles to the front page. (Where they promptly get buried for being inaccurate.) Several users who ONLY digg AlexaW's submissions, all of whom signed up in the last 3 weeks. Coincidence? Not a chance. This needs to be stopped immediately. More on Daniel Eran:TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Of course, there's a good support community out there for older Apple devices, but Apple can't take credit for that. Anyone running OSX 10.3 or older wont be getting any updates any time soon.
;-)
So, the Software Update patches I've been getting for 10.3 are not being sent out by Apple? Clearly this is evidence of a serious security breach.
And then there are the countless times I've been unable to run applications because they were coded for a more recent version of OSX than I was running.
This was indeed a problem until recently, when Apple finally froze OS X's ABI as of 10.4. They claim now that if it's coded for 10.4, it should work for the foreseeable future (OS XI, maybe?).
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
To read some people here, though, you'd think that we were fighting a constant, losing battle to get the truth out past the MS shills in the press.
It's mostly a matter of ignorance perpetuated by M$'s $1 billion/month marketing and legal budget. Take this story about M$ threats to Dell over Linux in 2002, for example. Despite reading the emails, the author publishes the M$ party line, "we didn't take any retaliatory action against Dell. In fact, we very clearly increased our investment with Dell." That's not just wrong, it misses the meat of the story as I did myself. The most important admission of the M$ email tread was that one of M$'s own executives thought it was in Dell's best interest to adopt Linux. That email tread has been put into the memory hole along with the rest of the case, though I imagine Dell took note. The combination of feeding reporters BS, shiny feel good advertising, paying people to BS Wikipedia and other forums and removing evidence of their wrong doing is very powerful. Most people have a favorable view of M$ which is demonstrably wrong.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The actual number of Macs in use is nearly double what they report, because they count PC hardware sales like Mac sales, but they also add in PC *software* sales into the figures.
Apple sells both together at the same time and so for every Mac sold, it is reported as 1/2 of a PC sale.
The end result if that you can take ALL of the numbers in these articles for Mac and almost double them, which is very close to the reality we see. 15% in the U.S. - actual computer units(OS aside), and an installed "still in use" base of closer to 25% or so. Especially considering educational markets, where Apple is easily 50% in use, given the typical school or university's idea of a computer lab being somethng they install and forget about for a decade. IE - the PC labs on campus are a last resort, never maintained, and if it runs 2000, you are lucky - W95 being still common. The PC labs are deserted and the Mac labs have a waiting list, typically. A mac from 1995 will still run perfectly well by comparison(and that's usually what's still in the lab, chugging away. Not the newest OS, but System 8.x wasn't a bad OS at the time, either)
But none of this is really the main issue, which these articles point out. PCs can own business for all Apple cares. They are doing an end-run and making new markets. Apple still owns education, high-end poblishing, video and audio work, and so on - all incredibly high-end or niche markets with high profitibility. The point someone made here about it being like auto sales is key.
Apple is like BMW. They make high-end performance products aimed at high-end markets.
Dell is essentially Chevy. They churn out cheap stuff for the masses. A high percentage of their sales are to rental fleets as well.(PC equivalent to corporate accounts)
Comparing both on the same page is nearly impossible except that they both are cars being sold to comsumers.
And D) As a result of C, Macs have a higher profit margin. The bargain box doesn't have much in the way of profit built in.
~!J!