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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!
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"
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
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 $3.4 billion in profit.
Rouding up, Apple's profits are 30% of Microsoft's.
Lalala
Sorry guys, the "Pro-Microsoft Press" is as much a straw-man shibboleth as "Main Stream Media's Liberal Bias". Give me a break! How many analysts out there saw the Zunes Microsoft unveiled last fall and actually predicted a success?
Shibboleth, I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Straw man, I understand but did not see one in the article. They were careful to attribute the source of pro-Zune/M$ 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.
so, by your reasoning MS Windows isn't one of the most "sold" pieces of software ever ?
but it still generates revenue, and for most, this is what counts. specially for shareholders.
What ? Me, worry ?
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'
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!
Why marginal costs matter. Apple develops OS X and Microsoft develops Windows REGARDLESS of costs. When Apple sells and iPod for $300, they generally spent $200 on parts and sales costs. So while their top line (revenue) goes up by $300, their gross income (revenue - COGS) only goes up $100. While revenue is interesting, a company has to pay all it's expenses out of gross profits. When Microsoft sells a Copy of Vista for $150, the marginal costs (COGS) is pretty close to $0, but for retail is probably $25 or so (packaging, shipping, tracking, etc.). So while their revenue went up $150, gross profits went up $125. Basically, for $300 in revenue, if Microsoft's gross margins are 5/6th, and Apple's are 1/3rd, then Microsoft is doing MUCH better off the same sales.
Now, investors care about Net Profits, after paying for everything. But the company (internally, non C-level employees) cares about gross profits, because that is the money that is available to pay salaries, etc. However, market analysis of businesses normally looks at revenue, because while it isn't a meaningful number, it's the hardest to fake, and analysts normally assume that companies in the same market have similar margins.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck