Lower prices to get more customers? I see the elitists freaking.
Or maybe they learnt from the iPhone: hide the price in something else like a phone contract. Have your priced one without a contract?
I recently bought a Mac Mini as a PVR despite the higher cost because I wanted something I could use as a computer if I needed to move to a different spec for video some time in the future. I've been really impressed with a detail I didn't expect. Twice, after a power failure that reset everything else except my Macbook with its own battery, the Mini was still going. I haven't yet worked out if it uses safe sleep or whether it has a big capacitor to keep it going across power fails.
It's this sort of detail on a low-cost model that builds loyalty. Much better than the horrible Underperformas of the 1990s that nearly put Apple out of business.
If Apple is going to go much lower-cost, I really hope they don't do cheap. My guess is that some of the lessons from the iPhone will go into making a really low-cost entry-level notebook. Tablet? Not so convinced. It's been done and hasn't been a spectacular success.
The perspective changes depending on whether you're looking at it from the PC end, or the Mac end.
Take Acer. Their average netbook sells for about $325.
But their "expensive", most popular machine other than netbooks, costs just $700.
I think of $700 as cheap for a laptop.
I agree on laptops and $700 might be around the high end of the Table range (assuming several models) from Apple. I don't see Apple ever doing 'cheap' and I think the Tablet will be designed not to cannibalize laptops too much. The street still thinks Tablets are coming 2010 don't they? It would be nice to see them out in time for the Christmas cycle.
Basically, if Apple are going to reach a broader market...they are going to have to offer 'cheaper' products. What this means is many things.
Apple drove the iPod price down over the years and covered more markets. Yet the quality of the product remained...yet allowed access to people with a smaller budget or to cover different needs.
They've done/doing the same thing with iPhone (initially sluggish sales until they cut the price of it...laughing in the face of Mel's comments that when Apple offer cheap products no one buys them...re-hi-hee-eally, Mel'? Looks at the sales of Apple TV, Mini, iPod Nano, Shuffle. Oh? And sales of Snow Leopard? Need to get off your elitest high horse.) There IS a demand in black and white hard sales data for affordable Apple products. No one is seriously suggesting Apple HAS to be the cheap-est. Otherwise their quality status would be compromised and we wouldn't see blow out quarters.
I welcome the addition of price cuts and 'more' offerings to the sub-£1000 market as Apple makes 'Mac computing' (based on Os X) available for 'the rest of us.'
I'm hoping that the Macbook and low end iMacs and Mac Minis get price cuts to parry and thrust against the Windows 7 launch. It's EXACTLY what Apple needs to be doing to maintain their momentum. Any loss of Gross Margins (which are 'gross', heh, eheh...compared to eg Netbook margins...) will be offset by volume as Mac sales hit an amazing 3million plus sales!!!
Congratulations Apple on the 3 million plus sales. It's been coming for a while. If they want to maintain this momentum...cheap-ER products, more accessible quality and price to people who are just 'glass ceilinged' out of this Mac renaissance.
And if they could offer another, affordable desktop product I think it would help drive desktop sales for those from the Switcher market who are used to their tower products. Though with Apple sales data of Laptop to desktop ratio of 4:1...it's not looking hopeful. Still, if there is a quad core iMac with a decent gpu, it would take the sting out of the mid-tower argument. Though a Mac Pro mini at the price point of the years ago G4 towers would make myself and others very happy campers.
What's interesting is they said they would do this well over a year ago and instead, they introduced a more expensive unibody laptop, iMac prices went up everywhere except the US (despite the US having the worst economy and the fact that the international debt has mostly been caused by the US) and the entry Mac Pro went up by a ridiculous amount.
So now after a year, they come back and say the same thing. This time I believe them but they are clearly already reaping excessive profit margins so a drop will at best bring them to the point of being reasonable. It'll be something like the £1900 Mac Pro, which used to be £1500 dropping by 34% of their gross profit, which will be £200-300 and bring it all the way down to £1600 maybe i.e still more expensive than it was.
The entry Macbook used to be £700, it's now £750 but it's still the crappy old white one. Everybody wants the unibody one so now that the laptops have taken 74% of the Mac marketshare, they can lower the prices and drop the white Macbook and bring the 13" unibody down to £750 (it's only a £150 drop). Then bring in a £550 tablet.
That 74% number looks pretty good because I've said all along, there's no point in buying an iMac any more when a unibody laptop costs the same for the same performance and you can get a 20" IPS display for under £200 and a 24" for £400. You get two screens, portability and the value holds better in the laptops and you can actually upgrade your hard drive.
What I'd love to see happen:
Mini = £399-£549 (£100 drop) same spec
Tablet = £549-£749 <- dual core Atom
13" unibody = £749-1099 <- Core 2 Duo
15" unibody = £1099-1499 <- Clarksfield quads
iMac (oh no, iMac isn't needed any more)
Mac Pro £1499+ same spec
It sounds like a long term price reduction from what Cook says rather than an immediate drop but eventually that's what I'd like to see happen.
the computer market is changing. Apple is pushing out Dell/HP on the higher end and Acer and other chineese makers are doing the same on the low end. All computers are made in china by Acer and a few other companies so it was only a matter of time before they started to sell them. Not like Dell/HP offer much value. they just rebrand what they buy and install other companies' software and offer crappy support. the only companies that make money in the PC world are Microsoft and Intel. Dell and HP make their money on services since even servers are dirt cheap these days
What makes you think he needs to learn? He was the one who broke all fundraising records by making it easy to give small amounts.
I liked the bit about being surprised Snow Leopard sold so well. I seldom buy an OS upgrade, and soldier on a few releases behind because the value to me is minimal ? I don't care about eye candy and don't much care for beta testing until release 10.x.5. But I bought an SL family pack because (a) the price was good and (b) it was a nice technology upgrade without a lot of cruft.
I hope that's the lesson Apple has learnt. I hope the new hardware is minimal, a real technology advance and inexpensive because it's well designed not because of compromising quality.
Is amazing how good adoption is when the price is $30. Hopefully a lower upgrade price in the future will be a result. You won't make as many per copy, but you will sell more of them and just maybe lesson the support headache on Apple.
And what was the rate back in March 2009, when the last Mac Pros were introduced?
A: 1 AUD = 0.64 USD
This is why it is going to be interesting whether they change the prices to match the current market or they actually do give us an actual drop in price.
Is amazing how good adoption is when the price is $30. Hopefully a lower upgrade price in the future will be a result. You won't make as many per copy, but you will sell more of them and just maybe lesson the support headache on Apple.
I think the number is actually low since the install base for supported Macs is surely more than 2x higher than it was when Leopard was released.
Since SP1 on Vista, doing some minor tweaks... As long as printer drivers and AD2003 are there, then the smart money is on some people had no choice.
But some have no choice in the matter. XP only handles 2 CPU's and 3.25gb of ram, period. So that new 4 core desktop the GU dept needed for their software, guess what-Vista 64b.
"First," Oppenheimer said, were "new products we have and will announce, delivering greater value, lower gross margin than predecessors."
I don't know how carefully he chose the word predecessors but it mostly sounds like updates, and not new products.
New cheap: MacBook Plastic, MacBook, low end iPhone, Mac Mini, iMac.
The tablet, or whatever it is... I'm thinking they introduce it at a "just right/ somewhat premium" price point for the early adopters.
Quote:
He said that Apple expects freight costs to be "more than normal," adding that while "in general we spend more in freight in [holiday] Q1, but this increase is larger than usual. I'm sorry, I can't be specific on the product, but it's an abnormal sequential increase."
This is fun! The Product is very specific wording This is the new shit!
Not sure I like the words "cheap" or "cheaper" when it comes to discribing Apple produces. Sounds so negitve. Lower priced or economicaly priced sounds and reads better. Sure harder on the tongue but cheap just sound so Wal-Mart like. Just sayin...
the specialized business software they rely on has to be updated and completely debugged for Win 7 first
Or I just run it in the Windows XP compatibility box. Microsoft acquiring Kidaro was a lesson learned from stalled Vista deployments...
Quote:
then they have to train everyone. right now they are mainly focusing on Server 2007 deployment still, and need to finish that first. there is always a multi-year lag in overall enterprise updates for such reasons.
There is no Server 2007. Server 2008 and Office 2007 perhaps.
XP is out of mainstream support and is nearing the end of extended support. And custom support contracts once an OS goes out of general support are hideously expensive. Just ask the Navy who had contracts for NT4 for years. Smart large corporations will be moving to 7 quickly, if they aren't already on Vista. Small and medium businesses will likely struggle more, but the big boys will move - the risks of staying and possibly loosing support are just too great (and don't think MS doesn't know that).
Buying new machines won't be an option for many because we're still in a recession, and neither business or consumers seem to be in the mood to replace their machines yet. THe PC industry moved only by 2% this quarter, and while some will be waiting for the new OS, that still doesn't look great.
I'd wager most companies are waiting for Windows 7. Converting in place machines is a loosing proposition. If you have volume contracts you can get PC's with monitors under $500 with the new OS. You'd burn more in labor hours trying to update old machines.
You might be right = the recession might force people to hold off. But I think there will be a noticeable bump this quarter. Everyone I have talked with has a huge pent up demand....
Comments
What i am fussed over though is the fact of the price difference between the US store and the AUS store being that the US$ is doing so badly.
currently (as posting this) the $ value is
United States Dollars\t \tAustralia Dollars
1 USD = 1.07796 AUD\t \t1 AUD = 0.927677 USD
And what was the rate back in March 2009, when the last Mac Pros were introduced?
A: 1 AUD = 0.64 USD
Lower prices to get more customers? I see the elitists freaking.
Or maybe they learnt from the iPhone: hide the price in something else like a phone contract. Have your priced one without a contract?
I recently bought a Mac Mini as a PVR despite the higher cost because I wanted something I could use as a computer if I needed to move to a different spec for video some time in the future. I've been really impressed with a detail I didn't expect. Twice, after a power failure that reset everything else except my Macbook with its own battery, the Mini was still going. I haven't yet worked out if it uses safe sleep or whether it has a big capacitor to keep it going across power fails.
It's this sort of detail on a low-cost model that builds loyalty. Much better than the horrible Underperformas of the 1990s that nearly put Apple out of business.
If Apple is going to go much lower-cost, I really hope they don't do cheap. My guess is that some of the lessons from the iPhone will go into making a really low-cost entry-level notebook. Tablet? Not so convinced. It's been done and hasn't been a spectacular success.
Apple trading premium margins for volume
Give it up, Mel'.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Lemon Bon Bon.
It depends on what's meant by cheap.
The perspective changes depending on whether you're looking at it from the PC end, or the Mac end.
Take Acer. Their average netbook sells for about $325.
But their "expensive", most popular machine other than netbooks, costs just $700.
I think of $700 as cheap for a laptop.
I agree on laptops and $700 might be around the high end of the Table range (assuming several models) from Apple. I don't see Apple ever doing 'cheap' and I think the Tablet will be designed not to cannibalize laptops too much. The street still thinks Tablets are coming 2010 don't they? It would be nice to see them out in time for the Christmas cycle.
Apple drove the iPod price down over the years and covered more markets. Yet the quality of the product remained...yet allowed access to people with a smaller budget or to cover different needs.
They've done/doing the same thing with iPhone (initially sluggish sales until they cut the price of it...laughing in the face of Mel's comments that when Apple offer cheap products no one buys them...re-hi-hee-eally, Mel'? Looks at the sales of Apple TV, Mini, iPod Nano, Shuffle. Oh? And sales of Snow Leopard? Need to get off your elitest high horse.) There IS a demand in black and white hard sales data for affordable Apple products. No one is seriously suggesting Apple HAS to be the cheap-est. Otherwise their quality status would be compromised and we wouldn't see blow out quarters.
I welcome the addition of price cuts and 'more' offerings to the sub-£1000 market as Apple makes 'Mac computing' (based on Os X) available for 'the rest of us.'
I'm hoping that the Macbook and low end iMacs and Mac Minis get price cuts to parry and thrust against the Windows 7 launch. It's EXACTLY what Apple needs to be doing to maintain their momentum. Any loss of Gross Margins (which are 'gross', heh, eheh...compared to eg Netbook margins...) will be offset by volume as Mac sales hit an amazing 3million plus sales!!!
Congratulations Apple on the 3 million plus sales. It's been coming for a while. If they want to maintain this momentum...cheap-ER products, more accessible quality and price to people who are just 'glass ceilinged' out of this Mac renaissance.
And if they could offer another, affordable desktop product I think it would help drive desktop sales for those from the Switcher market who are used to their tower products. Though with Apple sales data of Laptop to desktop ratio of 4:1...it's not looking hopeful. Still, if there is a quad core iMac with a decent gpu, it would take the sting out of the mid-tower argument. Though a Mac Pro mini at the price point of the years ago G4 towers would make myself and others very happy campers.
Apple aint dull. I'll give 'em that.
Lemon Bon Bon.
What's interesting is they said they would do this well over a year ago and instead, they introduced a more expensive unibody laptop, iMac prices went up everywhere except the US (despite the US having the worst economy and the fact that the international debt has mostly been caused by the US) and the entry Mac Pro went up by a ridiculous amount.
So now after a year, they come back and say the same thing. This time I believe them but they are clearly already reaping excessive profit margins so a drop will at best bring them to the point of being reasonable. It'll be something like the £1900 Mac Pro, which used to be £1500 dropping by 34% of their gross profit, which will be £200-300 and bring it all the way down to £1600 maybe i.e still more expensive than it was.
The entry Macbook used to be £700, it's now £750 but it's still the crappy old white one. Everybody wants the unibody one so now that the laptops have taken 74% of the Mac marketshare, they can lower the prices and drop the white Macbook and bring the 13" unibody down to £750 (it's only a £150 drop). Then bring in a £550 tablet.
That 74% number looks pretty good because I've said all along, there's no point in buying an iMac any more when a unibody laptop costs the same for the same performance and you can get a 20" IPS display for under £200 and a 24" for £400. You get two screens, portability and the value holds better in the laptops and you can actually upgrade your hard drive.
What I'd love to see happen:
Mini = £399-£549 (£100 drop) same spec
Tablet = £549-£749 <- dual core Atom
13" unibody = £749-1099 <- Core 2 Duo
15" unibody = £1099-1499 <- Clarksfield quads
iMac (oh no, iMac isn't needed any more)
Mac Pro £1499+ same spec
It sounds like a long term price reduction from what Cook says rather than an immediate drop but eventually that's what I'd like to see happen.
the computer market is changing. Apple is pushing out Dell/HP on the higher end and Acer and other chineese makers are doing the same on the low end. All computers are made in china by Acer and a few other companies so it was only a matter of time before they started to sell them. Not like Dell/HP offer much value. they just rebrand what they buy and install other companies' software and offer crappy support. the only companies that make money in the PC world are Microsoft and Intel. Dell and HP make their money on services since even servers are dirt cheap these days
What makes you think he needs to learn? He was the one who broke all fundraising records by making it easy to give small amounts.
I liked the bit about being surprised Snow Leopard sold so well. I seldom buy an OS upgrade, and soldier on a few releases behind because the value to me is minimal ? I don't care about eye candy and don't much care for beta testing until release 10.x.5. But I bought an SL family pack because (a) the price was good and (b) it was a nice technology upgrade without a lot of cruft.
I hope that's the lesson Apple has learnt. I hope the new hardware is minimal, a real technology advance and inexpensive because it's well designed not because of compromising quality.
Is amazing how good adoption is when the price is $30. Hopefully a lower upgrade price in the future will be a result. You won't make as many per copy, but you will sell more of them and just maybe lesson the support headache on Apple.
Maybe the "pipeline" is very close...
currently (as posting this) the $ value is
United States Dollars\t \tAustralia Dollars
1 USD = 1.07796 AUD\t \t1 AUD = 0.927677 USD
And what was the rate back in March 2009, when the last Mac Pros were introduced?
A: 1 AUD = 0.64 USD
This is why it is going to be interesting whether they change the prices to match the current market or they actually do give us an actual drop in price.
Is it too much to ask for both??
Is amazing how good adoption is when the price is $30. Hopefully a lower upgrade price in the future will be a result. You won't make as many per copy, but you will sell more of them and just maybe lesson the support headache on Apple.
I think the number is actually low since the install base for supported Macs is surely more than 2x higher than it was when Leopard was released.
Since SP1 on Vista, doing some minor tweaks... As long as printer drivers and AD2003 are there, then the smart money is on some people had no choice.
But some have no choice in the matter. XP only handles 2 CPU's and 3.25gb of ram, period. So that new 4 core desktop the GU dept needed for their software, guess what-Vista 64b.
Why can't they just use the 64bit version of XP?
"First," Oppenheimer said, were "new products we have and will announce, delivering greater value, lower gross margin than predecessors."
I don't know how carefully he chose the word predecessors but it mostly sounds like updates, and not new products.
New cheap: MacBook Plastic, MacBook, low end iPhone, Mac Mini, iMac.
The tablet, or whatever it is... I'm thinking they introduce it at a "just right/ somewhat premium" price point for the early adopters.
He said that Apple expects freight costs to be "more than normal," adding that while "in general we spend more in freight in [holiday] Q1, but this increase is larger than usual. I'm sorry, I can't be specific on the product, but it's an abnormal sequential increase."
This is fun! The Product is very specific wording
Let's get ready to rumble!
The Apple stores are down all over the world, including the US.
Let's get ready to rumble!
What?!? No launch party??
What?!? No launch party??
We don't need no steeenken' launch party.
it will take two years to get rolling.
Not for us.
the specialized business software they rely on has to be updated and completely debugged for Win 7 first
Or I just run it in the Windows XP compatibility box. Microsoft acquiring Kidaro was a lesson learned from stalled Vista deployments...
then they have to train everyone. right now they are mainly focusing on Server 2007 deployment still, and need to finish that first. there is always a multi-year lag in overall enterprise updates for such reasons.
There is no Server 2007. Server 2008 and Office 2007 perhaps.
XP is out of mainstream support and is nearing the end of extended support. And custom support contracts once an OS goes out of general support are hideously expensive. Just ask the Navy who had contracts for NT4 for years. Smart large corporations will be moving to 7 quickly, if they aren't already on Vista. Small and medium businesses will likely struggle more, but the big boys will move - the risks of staying and possibly loosing support are just too great (and don't think MS doesn't know that).
Buying new machines won't be an option for many because we're still in a recession, and neither business or consumers seem to be in the mood to replace their machines yet. THe PC industry moved only by 2% this quarter, and while some will be waiting for the new OS, that still doesn't look great.
I'd wager most companies are waiting for Windows 7. Converting in place machines is a loosing proposition. If you have volume contracts you can get PC's with monitors under $500 with the new OS. You'd burn more in labor hours trying to update old machines.
You might be right = the recession might force people to hold off. But I think there will be a noticeable bump this quarter. Everyone I have talked with has a huge pent up demand....