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Apple Dominates "Premium PC" Market
itwbennett writes "Macs made up a whopping 91 percent of the $1,000-and-up computer market in June. Not so long ago, $1,000 got you an entry-level machine. Today the average computer sells for $701, while the average Windows machine sells for only $515. Still, Macs only make up 8.7% of PC sales. But is that really such a bad position to be in? Consider an Apples to Apples, that is, Macs to iPhones comparison: the iPhone takes only a sliver of the phone market but a much larger share of the profits."
BMW has about 5-8%* of the auto market, but they make a lot of money in that little niche. You don't have to dominate the world to be profitable.
And yes, this does go to show that Microsoft is right in the laptop hunters ad -- Macs *are* pricier. But to those that buy them, they get something of value for that extra $$$.
*I just made that up.
Go somewhere random
These numbers only reference brick and mortar retail sales. 3 out of the last 4 machines I bought were purchased from the manufacturer's website, customized to my specs, and only one of those was under $1000. They wouldn't have been included in these sorts of 'selective statistics'
As for $1000+ machines, it doesn't cover servers/workstations either (which you wouldn't buy over the counter anyway).
What this says to me:
1) Apple has a decent retail store presence :)
2) Macs are frakkin' expensive
3) By selectively applying filters to your stats, you can say whatever you want. Ladies, I have the biggest dick you'll ever see (in this room/of all males within a five foot radius/for the next five minutes).
People that are willing to put $1,000 into their PC probably don't want the limited choices offered by OEMs. They are going to build it from parts.
Either way, time will tell.
We've been hearing this line for almost a decade now, and time has told to a tune of nearly 6-fold gain in shareholder value since 2000, giving Apple today a larger market cap than Google, HP, and Dell. I keep waiting for this grand charade to end, but Apple keeps raking in $8 billion dollars a quarter.
They've succeeded by every rational metric of business.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The Macs I've owned over the past few years (starting with a Powerbook for my wife) have been excellent. The hardware and construction are top-notch. The design (worth a little bit, anyway) is superior to pretty much everything produced in the Wintel arena.
Most important, though, the OS kicks ass.
Using a Mac is not just a neutral experience. It is pleasurable. Combine the excellent hardware engineering, and the superior UI design of OS X, and you have a machine that is worth the extra money. (Which really isn't extra. As others have pointed out, a comparable Wintel machine is in the same price range.)
Me, I still gravitate to Linux. When my wife ran MS-Windows, though, I had to either lock her machine down and manage it myself, or let her manage it, but re-install the OS every six months. With OS X, she can manage the machine herself, and I don't have to lock it down or re-install all the time.
My sig still holds. MS-Windows (and the machines it typically runs on) is like Budweiser. Cheap, but not worth the price. Once you get used to the good stuff, it's hard to go back to the shit peddled as "The King of Computers."
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I've been using different GUI front ends for programming and work for over 10 years now - and Apple laptops for the last 5 years of so.
Open office is now a fully acceptable spreadsheet and word processor. Gimp is fully functional for photos. Most other services are web based. VLC, media playing, etc are all working on Linux too. Issues that used to be common are now well supported in the open-source community with networking, video acceleration, disks, USB, drivers, etc.
Apple with it's BSD-based kernel and more open culture than Microsoft, could openly embrace the open source community, however, it seems to be working actively to prevent open access to a large number of their software-hardware combinations, and refuses to embrace and support the console-using, computer-hacking crowd (like me). It is understandable from a short-term financial standpoint, but long term, I think this is a mistake for Apple. I think taking the position at the genius bar of "if you open Terminal, we won't help you" alienates the most dedicated and supportive users in the marketplace. It is that community that could rocket Apple forward with more contributions and functionality - but now they continue to be pushed to support Linux instead.
It is disappointing to me that we live in a world where large companies like Apple still grow primarily based on marketing, selling and distributing physical things over digital products, or from monetizing the support and services (and maintaining a community) around increased productivity.
The difference in price between all these products is small compared to the value of ones times spent dealing with issue that arise. Regardless of how one values their own time - after any major screw ups taking many, many hours to fix - you have already surpassed any difference in price between the systems. Reliability, functionality, and real security (and how much time you have to spend later to get those) are the real value of owning a laptop for several years, not just the initial price.
But all in all, lack of Apple support for hacking means I'll be looking seriously at a Linux-based laptop (at 1/2 the price and more open standards) for my next laptop.
Don't forget: For a while, PPC *was* better than Intel. And for new users (i.e. anyone who hadn't grown up with using mice), 1 button was less confusing than two. But you know what? Things changed. Intel got off their ass and made great chips (while Moto/IBM sat on their ass with PPC) and the number of people who knew how to use a mouse became a majority of their market.
And windows users don't have to do any of those things either. Every piece of anti-virus software under the sun updates itself, completely without any human intervention, at some god awful time of night so as to avoid doing it while you may be using your computer. Similarly, right out of the box windows runs a scheduled weekly disk degrag at something like 3 am every wednesday or some other silly time. These things happen and I do nothing to cause them, I didn't even set them up originally -- they were just pre-configured that way and if I don't like them I can change them.
Nor do I have to reinstall windows yearly -- Vista on this machine has been installed for 18 months and everything is as snappy as the day I brought it home.
Try to understand, when you buy a mac you're not choosing between OS 10.5 and Windows 95. There's really major selling point of Mac over Windows at this point other than simple preference.
If you PREFER MacOS, by all means by a Mac -- but don't kid yourself into thinking you're getting something the rest of us aren't getting. We're all getting the OS of our choice and more or less the same feature set. Your preference costs more, but if you prefer it, and are willing to pay the money, then go for it.
I am an IT director for a small private school (public districts send us kids). We have adequate resources at our disposal, but I wouldn't call us a "rich" school.
We have finally replaced every Dell desktop with a Mac as of this year. We are still solidly Windows in the server room, but every other machine in our two locations is a Mac.
Yes, they were a bit more expensive than what we could have bought from Dell or HP, but the usefulness of Mac OS on robustly built hardware is worth the expense.
Out of 100 or so iMacs and 200 or so MacBooks, we've had about 15 keyboard failures (the keys were popped/ripped off), 2 cracked laptop screens, and 2 hard drive failures - this has been over 3 years.
Students are extremely hard on the machines, yet they keep right on working. Contrast this to the Dells we used to have. Keyboards and mice were constantly being replaced, USB ports and power switches routinely failed, many LCD screens were thrown away due to panel or backlight failure....etc.
Now here's the clincher - only two Macs in three years had to be re-imaged due to "software" issues. Our windows machines were being regularly reimaged due to numerous software problems.
Our switch to Macs has been a resounding success. I can't imagine that we are the only company in the world to realize the benefits of the Mac platform.
-ted