Acer chairman sees Mac growth stalling in face of ultrabook surge - Page 3

Thanks, I needed a chuckle this morning.

With few exceptions, Apple does not lower their prices to meet the competition.

Rather, Apple establishes a top-quality solution at a strategic price-point and lets the others try to compete. Sometimes, Apple will trade-off (defer) some initial profits (margin points) to set the minimum bar and gain market acceptance -- recovering sacrificed early profits by gaining increased sales and economies of scale.

The most recent example of this was the 2010 iPad 1. Everyone expected Apple to announce a $1,000 tablet that was a ho-hum version of existing tablets. Supposedly, the competitors all had plans (frothing at their respective mouths) for their own ho-hum offerings at 10%-30% less than Apple's price. Instead, Apple defined a new category solution at a price that others could not even approach -- for almost 2 years now.

Today, Apple owns the tablet market, has high margins (read that as pricing flexibility) and follow-on product in the pipeline... with competition just beginning to emerge (if we believe what read rather than what we see).

The way Apple will match prices is to change the rules again! I suspect that they will introduce an iPad 3 at initially reduced prices (margin-points) and continue to offer the iPad 2 at a new lower price (to pre-empt competition).

The competition will have no product to challenge the iPad 3...and their just-emerging iPad 2 competitors will not be able to compete with the new iPad 2 price-point offered by Apple.

You see, Apple has a long-term strategy which allows them flexibility (features, pricing, timing, supply chain) in attaining their objectives.

Said in plain language, Apple has an iPad 3 that they can introduce any time they choose -- and they can choose to offer the iPad 2 at a [very profitable] new, lower, price if it serves their long-term strategy.

I believe the same strategy applies to other Apple products (Air, iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, Mac) as they are all part of the whole.

I believe that Tim has a market simulation (bigger than a Numbers spreadsheet) that has Apple's plans mapped out for the next 5 years in detail -- and the next 10 years in general. As part of that simulation, Apple models the effect of competition, disasters, world economy, unforeseen innovation, etc.

Apple needs not and does not make knee-jerk reactions to temporary conditions -- rather they incorporate the changes and refine their plans.

ROTFLMAO....that was a good one.

When did Apple become stiff?

Ya' know... this Apple-Wang rivalry goes back decades...

In the 1970s-1980s there was a specialty Word Processor computer named Wang (there were several models).

I can remember a talk by Guy Kawasaki where he described the typical business computer user...

Guy said that this user sits around with his Apple in one hand and his Wang in the other...

True story!

Wang is such a wanker! As is his pathetic company of cheap plastic crap.

Why does Intel have to show these companies how to design a notebook?

It's built into the whole Wintel industry - and is an institutional problem for them. PC makers control neither their OS nor - except some to some extent - their basic hardware design. If you're selling the same Windows 8 next year as every other PC maker, it's hard to add enough value via hardware alone - and again, nearly all are buying component subassemblies from most of the same suppliers - so difficult to sell Win machines for hundreds more than your PC competitors.

Especially when you change designs more often to keep up in the spec wars as well. So their design and manufacturing processes are sloppier and designed to slap more configs in in less time.

They also have less control over channels. That is, they're constrained by what Best Buy and Wal-Mart, etc. will buy from them - and they're competing against each other selling the same brands by and large..... ...whereas Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart by and large take what Apple deigns to offer them.

And no world-wide networks of retail stores.

So there's enormous pressure for price (and quality regression) to the same lowest cut-throat common denominator.

They created this system - and it worked until a viable competitor with a better model finally emerged and stole all their profits. And it's hard to see their way out of the box canyon they've driven themselves into.

Meaning it's an endless dogfight over a declining commodity and companies like Acer really can't do much to alter all the variables in that arc.


Sounds good. Hope you're right!

No barrel but you're wrong-o from the get. Intel is setting a MAXIMUM "suggested" selling price, not a minimum one or a floor of any kind. Making stuff cheaper is NOT against anti-trust law - except in the case of "dumping" product below cost to drive a smaller competitor out of business.


Somebody has a fever here - because the net predictions are hallucinatory in nature. As long as Apple keeps its lines fresh, innovative and unique - and maintains quality and world-best support - Wintel can stay alive (tho' many companies may fall or merge) - but they'll at least maintain their relative position in the industry.

You know, some days I simply thank the Divine I don't have to tell lies just to put food on the table. Like, lying for a living. That's just bad karma, man. I don't believe in "burning in hell for eternity" and all that, but karma... it's a b*tch, and generally tends to come back and bite you in the butt.

Basically the lowest-end "branded" laptop/desktop company. A few people I know that bought Acer laptops tell me they're never going to again, ever.

If Asia doesn't implode because of Western economic woes, Apple will be what most white-collar workers in Asia will want. Apple is to Asians what "Bling" is to rappers.