Apple's government Mac sales surge 200%, enterprise grows 50% - Page 2

Yes, but (as pointed out several times before), he's here now as SendMe.

Commenting as a teacher and school administrator, Apple dropped the ball years ago in the education market. Specifically, districts already hard up for funding, didn't receive any significant discounts for using Apple products. PC makers ran with that opportunity which is why most K-12's in the country are using PC's.

My hope is that Apple utilizes the potential of the iPad to its fullest in the educational sector. I'd love to see printing support without using third-party apps.

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http://www.patentlyapple.com/

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ARE you silly guy ???

Almost every state in the USA has cut or shredded their a school outlays by $%3 to %$15 .

TEACHERS just hired are gone, forever their spots axed
Scholl supplies do not exist and have no budget IN many school districts. Leaving parents to send their children in with a garbage bag fill with supplies including toilet rolls and wipes .

Apple has hired hundreds of new education support personal to help school districts cope with their tech needs , Also apples computer's last so much longer compared to other systems. schools buy on a 3 yrs cycle or 4 yrs cycle not a 2 yrs cannibalized cycle . And it EXPENCES are much lower with apple .

AND apple with all its dis counts and free touches makes almost no money selling to large school system's . APPLE IS INVESTING IN OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE With the hope of doing the world good now and some type of loyalty down the road in later life .

What you should have said what was BIG businesses > NOT education .


peace dude

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I am not Techstump, nor am I Teckstud. However, I do have a secret identity. Keep guessing. You know you really care.

Are you really happy? Or do you just think you are?

Got an iPad? Can you see your favorite sites?
Got an iPhone? Can you hold a call?
Got a Time Capsule? Can you restore you files where you want them to go?
Got an iMac? Can you see your reflection?
Got an iPod touch? Can you take a picture?

It's always something with everything they do. Like no USB 3 or eSATA or Blu Ray.

And why not? Because it can't be done? Or because ONE MAN at Apple doesn't want you to do it?

Don't you think there is SOMETHING wrong with that?? Put down the Apple Pie and THINK for a minute.

And if every Apple device had all this stuff, you (and others) would find something else that it didn't have and complain about that.

There is a point where you have to draw a line and just get a product made in order to sell it.

When we owned the computer stores (1978-1989) Apple was actively seeking Education installations. As Apple was not in a position to provide after sales installation and support, and because they did not offer a complete solution (no LANS, shared printers, Hard Disks, etc), they would drive these sales through selected retailers with a proven track record.

Based in Sunnyvale, CA, our company sold, installed and supported education systems all over Northern California and some Southern California.

In June of 1980, due to the relentless pressure* of Vice Principal Marion Kenworthy of Saratoga HS, Saratoga, CA, we sold and installed the first LAN: a classroom with 7 Apple ][s networked to a 5 MB Corvus Hard Disk and 1 printer.

* Gene Carter was Apple VP of Marketing-- his daughter was a student at Saratoga HS (as was mine).

AIR, Apple supplied the computers on an Education grant. We supplied everything else and supported everything!

This was very successful and very well publicized at the time.

We made money on the deal, even without the sales of the Apple gear.

But we got the rep as the 'go to source' for Apple Education solutions.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Education sales resulted.


Marion went to work for Apple in their Education effort.


We continued to sell to this market as it evolved to include Macs.


When we sold our company in 1989, the buyers renamed it Education Access and discontinued retail sales to concentrate on Education (mainly K-12). They had a contract with Apple. that included Education Sales and support for the Western States.

I lost touch, but I don't think that Education Access was too successful -- they went out of business circa 1997-8.


Anyway, Apple likes to deliver complete solutions that are successful. When I knew them, they weren't structured to provide installation and after sales support.

I suspect that it is as true today, as it was then:

"It takes a lot more than good prices to make a successful Education Installation".


As to the iPad: It is still running the special iOS 3.2 that was forked so they could get it out the door. I suspect when the iPad gets iOS 4, this fall, it will have printer support and a lot more.


As to School Computer Labs: I would like to see schools teach more than just "using" computers and apps-- all necessary, but there is more. I would like to see them teach installation planning, maintenance (hardware and software), repair... and especially, programming.

Unfortunately, at the moment, it is difficult to program Macs and iPads -- but I think that is changing:

-- XCode 4 offers the potential to bring iOS and MAc OS X programming to a wider audience

-- XCode 4 also has the potential to be used to develop Web apps

-- Apple could release a HyperCard-like app for the iPad-- where anyone could create useful iPad apps.

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That's something the haters will never understand. And besides, Apple just adds it to later iterations, so we get it all anyhow when we buy the new one a year later. But the haters think that Apple needs to add every stupid gee-gaw to every product or else they all complain about the things the product was never DESIGNED to do.

These guys think that unless Apple adds USB3 RIGHT NOW, they won't sell any computers. They are always wrong.

Analyzing %s by themselves can be very misleading: i.e. If you're comparing 100 units sold to a previous base of 1000 the % increase will be a lot smaller than if your previous base was 100. I think Apple is still doing very well in the education marketplace.

Apple has built in the facilities for CAC into MacOS... it just needs the physical reader. The process was documented 4 years ago by the Naval Postgraduate School, and there are several solutions that have only made it easier since then.

Personally, I think your IT folks are just dragging their feet to avoid deploying machines they don't like.

I didn't put you on an ignore list. I feel sorry for anyone who would. It is refreshing to occasionally see something from someone who doesn't automatically go along with everything Apple does.

If the people who run this web site had a genuine sense of fair play, they would discipline everyone who uses the word "troll" in a manner that is in reality a personal attack targeting the individual who said something that was not complimentary to Apple. If the war of words escalates to the point where the person who was critical of Apple starts using name-calling in retaliation, then the people who run this "forum" punish that individual, not the people who started the personal attacks.

I liked your post, and I have often had similar thoughts. It is as though Jobs was disgusted by the strategy that worked so successfully for Gates and company, and eventually decided to play the game according to their rules. Microsoft has long followed the practice of resisting standards. They often participate in a token manner in standards committees, but when they do, they really only try to sabotage the effort. I have personally witnessed them doing this in activities related to the cable industry, and it was apparent to me that this was their true purpose. The standard that they would not control was not in their interest, so they tried to sabotage the effort. I now see Apple behaving in precisely the same manner. Anyone who refuses to believe this should ask these questions:

Why doesn't iTunes support DLNA? DLNA is a de facto standard, now adopted in virtually all of the network home theatre equipment, across all the major brands.

Why doesn't Apple put Blu-Ray drives in their computers? On every computer that Apple sells, the native screen resolution is substantially greater than the resolution of standard DVD. Blu-Ray is now a widely adopted de facto standard. You find many hundreds of titles sold at Best Buy. Yet, they will not play in Apple computers. Why?

And therein lies the problem. Apple hasn't been "actively seeking" education installations for years. In my corner of America (not CA BTW), grants have all but disappeared.

If Apple wants to get their devices into the public school systems, they need to provide the same incentives that a Dell or HP does. It's not about who has the best hardware and OS, it's about money.

To quote the character in The Right Stuff, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers".

John Mayer?

Why would Wolf highlight this? The fact that he did is evidence to me that he does not think clearly, and does not adhere to a substantive interpretation of the data.

Per-unit profit margin is meaningless unless it correlates directly to the earnings multiple. And in Apple's case, there is so much cash on hand that it makes no sense to care about the per-unit margin per se. What matters is the earnings, and there simply is no strong, absolute connection between per-unit profit and earnings. Some companies have minimal per-unit profit with high earnings, while other companies have enormous per-unit profit with unimpressive earnings. The fact that their per-unit margins are as high as they are, reveals next to nothing beyond the fact that people really like their products (because we know that Apple's manufacturing cost is not lower than the industry norm).

I'm just tired of this myth that says that Apple is doing an excellent job because they have high per-unit margins. It is a myth, and it doesn't help for an analyst such as Wolf to propagate this myth. If this were a board game (or computer game) where each player were restricted to selling the same number of units as all the other players, then this would make perfect sense. But to the extent that there is any restriction of this sort, it is only because Apple has put it in place for themselves.

Beyond all that, it is most likely true that when Apple went to the unibody design, that the per-unit manufacturing cost increased and squeezed the per-unit margins. It is likely the case that if they had not gone down that path, that the per-unit manufacturing cost would have gone down, and that they could have lowered the retail price while still increasing the per-unit margin. The per-unit margin would have increased along with the number of units sold, and the earnings associated with the product line, since they switched to the unibody design, would have been significantly greater than what they have been.

Why would they? Apple did this extremely aggressively 15-25 years ago and it didn't get them very far. School usage doesn't seem to correspond at all to purchases later in life, and educational institutions aren't as lucrative as the consumer market. Treat schools like businesses from the point of view of buying equipment for staff, but treat students like consumers and not institutional lab users.

In the past Apple had trouble with inventory management and distribution, market timing, and lack of economies of scale. Now they're market leaders in all of these areas. So while unit margins aren't in and of themselves indicative of corporate health, it is very impressive that they're able to sell what is essentially exactly the same hardware components as everyone else at a dramatic markup and still grow faster than the industry average.


I'm curious about this assertion. I would think that fewer components and a more automated manufacturing technique, while incurring some transition costs, would ultimately be cheaper to manufacture. With unibody you basically put a block of aluminum in one side and get a complete half-case out the other. Have you seen how many tiny screws the old cases took? If you have any solid data on the comparative per-unit manufacturing costs I'd find it very interesting.

If this success continues maybe next year Apple will offer a developer conference for Mac developers.

Well, you tell me and we'll both know

I've personally spoken with Apple's educational sales reps who have told me that they're trying to get back the K-12 market share that they lost in the 90's. Obviously they think it's important.

I'm sure those sales reps are, and do. But I don't think it's a priority for the corporation, or they'd offer deeper educational discounts, major educational partnerships, and release educational software for MacOS and iOS (maybe iLearn next to iWork and iLife?).

Dead on Booga. I'm frustrated by the lack of commitment on Apple's part in this area. These folks tell me they want to get back into the K-12 market but I'm paying real close to full freight to bring their hardware into the district

Cash on hand is utterly unrelated to margins. I can't understand why you would try to link the two.

I am also puzzled by your assertion that volume might be more important than margins. Perhaps in a commodity market it is, but Apple is not manufacturing steel, but consumer products. In a consumer products market, product differentiation is the key to success. In fact, you can think of margins as the measure of how well a consumer products company has managed to build the perception of value into their products. This is part of the extra that a consumer is willing to spend to buy Product A rather than Product B, even though Product B costs the same to produce, or even might be cheaper to buy. I'm sure we could all reel off dozens of examples of consumer products that sell for higher markups over the cost of production than others, because they are perceived by consumers to be superior in some way.

What you seem to be suggesting is that Apple should fundamentally alter their approach to the market, by making their products cheaper instead of focusing on the successful strategy of building a higher perception of value. I don't see any evidence for the utility of doing this.

Not everyone needs to drive a Mercedes.

Public schools are accountable to public oversight, and if all they need is email, the web, and a handful of EDU-specific apps, why pay a premium price just for the pride of ownership?

Study: Average Mac Computer Price More That Twice That of Average PC
http://gizmodo.com/5033865/study-ave...-of-average-pc

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08...t_share_stats/

So? All you are really saying is that Apple has been successful at selling at higher margins. It's the market they want to be in, the market they know how to address, the one where they have learned to be profitable, and possibly most importantly, the market consumers expect them to to address.

Yes, we agree that in the pursuit of the boutique consumer market Apple has effectively ceded the bulk of EDU market to other platforms.

Gotta love how he either is trying to spin it or simply doesnt realize that Apple is choosing not to license their OS to any and all PC vendors and DIYers on the planet. Does he even realize that comparing the business model of Apples Mac PC to MS Windows OS is pretty much the most foolish metric in computing that we have?

No, we don't agree on that.

You may be right, it could be that they're trying but after 20 years are still failing.

Let us know when they get to 20%....

Failing at what, exactly -- selling at very low margins, but not making it up in volume, like the rest of the PC industry? If so, bring me more of that kind of failure.

...so the fox said, "I'll bet those grapes taste sour anyway."

Ahh... Now, That sounds just like the Apple I dealt with 30 years ago... lots of verbal support by the local Apple reps-- but no resulting action by the Corporation.


Tell me, does Apple have an "Education Evangelist"?


If so, that's the person you need to get to!


In the old days Evangelists like Guy Kawasaki had the ear of Steve and other higher-ups. If you could present a reasoned case of cost vs benefits [to Apple] of doing what your asking Apple to do-- someone like Guy would listen, discuss and possibly be convinced. If convinced, Guy would see that the case was presented to the right people within Apple.

You may not get the results you wanted, or any results at all-- but the message would have been sent.


That's about all you can ask.

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Yes, and they grew 200%. That is truly impressive, given how huge Apple's market share was before.

BDU is a bag of hurt and Apple would never inflict anything like that on us users, no matter how much money it might put into Steve's pocket.

You let us know when you realize that 20% would be up there with the PC vendors that sell $300 PCs to the masses around the world. Then let us know when you realize that Apple’s business model makes it virtually impossible for them to ever reach 20% when they only cater to the top tiers of the consumer market. Then once you’ve figured that out, let us know when you realize that comparing an OS that is designed for a single vendor’s HW can’t be compared to an OS that is licensable to an an infinite number of PC vendors and DIYers without making yourself look like a troll and/or an idiot. Finally, let us know when it dawns on you that every PC vendor in the world is envious of Apple’s position of not relying on a 3rd-party OS nor having to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to turn a profit in PC sales that is well below Apple’s take of the market.

Or as Br'er rabbit said to the fox, "please don't throw me in that briar patch."

I buy a lot of those myself. I have an array of cloud servers in my office, each costing less than half the price of a Mac Mini. Indeed, a good value, and more interestingly their standby wattage is less than half that of Apple's best, making them far greener solutions for always-on systems.


Agreed: Apple has ceded the bulk of the market to others.

Please note that I never said that was a bad thing in the consumer space. On the contrary, I have a few Macs myself and enjoy them, just as we have a Mercedes in the garage next to a more rugged vehicle for more adventurous travel. Apple has the highest margins in the industry, and as an Apple shareholder I appreciate that as it lets me use the proceeds to buy more servers.

But the EDU space is a very different beast than boutique consumer niches. Public ed is beholden to public oversight, and for many districts the cost of goods still matters.

See ya' at the Beverly Hills PTA meeting...

I hope so too.

Two large hedge funds are closing their doors and I suspect others may be pulling back. AAPL has been the favorite in their holdings. Also, the macro fears are bringing the indexes down... and AAPL is part of them too.

The good news is that, unless the demand collapses in September, the company could make $4-4.50/s... or even more. They have guided 18.1B/Q4 sales and they could blow those numbers. Run rate PE could be 13... and that includes $40+B in cash. Take that out and the enterprise PE becomes 12. Unless the global demand tanks, it is a value stock.

I too am an AAPL share holder but I care greatly about education. Given Apple's massive profits and wealth, perhaps they should consider supplying genuine educational needs at a very special price. Like the GI bill, sometimes rewards come way down the line.