Your answered your own question, "PC desktop sales increased 12%..." so those are not declining.
Sorry, I was being imprecise. solipsism has better numbers. As I stated in a previous post the 12% number from your article was 12% for the entire PC market and not broken out by desktop or laptop.
Quote:
If you don't know, the ratio between desktops and notebooks in PCs is still very close to 50/50 which is different from the Apple world: 60% for notebooks and 40% for desktops. Intel thinks that the notebooks sales will surpass the desktops sales in 2009/2010.
Which means what? It means all desktop sales are losing market share. If the desktop sales growth (if any) is below total market sales growth then desktops as a whole are losing share. Therefore "dying" if you like. Or mor accurately simply declining.
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The growth of the top 5 manufacturers is still between 15 and 25%, not bad for people who are still selling towers (most of them anyway).
I've seen presentations from both Dell and HP that show that laptop sales are their primary growth areas. Toshiba sells no towers. Apple's mix you say is 60/40. Acer I didn't bother looking for.
So at MOST it's 3 of 5.
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Wherever the iMac takes its sales from, it is insignificant since the industry itself is still growing in all segments.
I'm tired of looking up numbers for you guys only for you to nitpick them. YOU find a NPD or Gartner article that CLEARLY shows that desktop sales are growing relative to the total market.
Otherwise, desktop and tower shares in decline as clearly indicated by negative retail sales growth and other indicators. Desktop sales growth is likely what is becoming insignificant with much of the growth occuring in notebooks.
"Notebooks continued to drive growth across the region with shipments recording an increase of over 43% year on year, while desktops suffered from the market contraction in Western Europe and declined by 1.7%, boosting the share of notebooks to over 55% of total EMEA shipments."
You lost any credibility you had right there. There are a lot of companies would disagree including Apple. You say you would support Apple if they released a tower, but all you do is attack anyone who might want something different than what Apple currently offers. Apple gets the credit when it does amazing things, but it should also here it when needs are not being met. A community full of yes men doesn't help, especially when the incomming switchers aren't going to be as radical or loyal. You might be here to feel different or superior or whatever to the average computer user, but there are those of us here that the OS is the difference to.
You lost any credibility you had right there. There are a lot of companies would disagree including Apple.
Mkay. Name a premiuum brand (desktop) tower maker:
Sony. Gone.
Toshiba. Gone.
IBM. Gone.
Apple sells workstations. Not premium branded desktop towers.
Dell and HP DO sell premium towers at the high end but they are high volume sellers that drove the above companies out of the market.
The only "premium" tower makers cater pretty much exclusively to the gamer market. Even there Alienware is now part of Dell.
The conclusion is that while you can STILL be a premium brand notebook maker (Sony, Toshiba, etc), you no longer can in the tower market. It's a commodity market with commodity pricing.
It would be interesting to know how many high end XPS systems Dell actually sells.
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You say you would support Apple if they released a tower, but all you do is attack anyone who might want something different than what Apple currently offers.
And all you do is constantly whine that Apple doesn't make an xMac in nearly every thread here.
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Apple gets the credit when it does amazing things, but it should also here it when needs are not being met. A community full of yes men doesn't help, especially when the incomming switchers aren't going to be as radical or loyal. You might be here to feel different or superior or whatever to the average computer user, but there are those of us here that the OS is the difference to.
Apple has a certain strategy and it appears to be working quite well in balancing user needs with maintaining margins and ASP. What no one has shown to date is that the balance would be better with an xMac than without. Either margins or ASP suffers without much indications that sales would improve to the vastly higher sales (2X or more) needed to MAINTAIN current desktop revenue much less exceed it.
That Apple has decided to ignore certain makets it deems unprofitable for them to pursue is unfortunate for you. But not necessarily for Apple.
Most of the laptops Sony and Toshiba sell are well under $1000. Real Premium. Please expand your knowledge of the computer industry past the shelves of Best Buy. Sony, when it sold desktops, sold the same OEM plastic Micro ATX crap that HP and dell sell, they just charged a lot more for, which is why they don't sell desktops anymore. The REAL premium makers are companies like Velocity Micro, Polywel, Asus, Sager, and a bunch of smaller ones. They have room to specialized because the market is big enough to have niches. Apple, on the other hand is the Mac market, so they basically have to be everything to everybody.
Sales of Mac Pros will never be high enough to drive the graphics card market.
On the other hand, a mid range consumer Mac where the user can choose his own video card definitely would do that.
"Drive" the graphics card market? Where did you learn that phrase?
I'm not talking about "driving" any market. I'm talking about a company such as ATI deciding they can sell enough cards to make a profit. They've done it before when the only Apples that accepted graphics cards were Powermacs. I bought several myself, because Apple didn't offer a powerful enough card, or didn't offer the control panel for the cards they did offer, or didn't include the hardware features the other cards offered.
But sales of the Powermac dropped to the point where it didn't pay for ATI to bother any longer.
Now that sales of the Mac Pro are up, they're putting their toe into the water again.
But they have to give us their top of the line cards. We'll see this summer, when both ATI, which is considered to be the company to get in front of the gpu race again, and Nvidia have new lines out.
High end ≠ new and exciting. High end is just the fastest stuff that is out. nVidia has held the crown for a long time now. They are not in a position where they *can* be desperate.
They havent held much of anything. their cards are not that much better.
Right now, if you read the web sites devoted to this, it's looking as though ATI will trump them shortly, in the summer.
This is always a precarious position to be in. It's not like the cpu business, where one misstep can lead to serious problems. GPU's come out with too much regularity, and the purchase isn't a big deal.
It's believed that Nvidia is doing this because they want to take attention away from ATI, which has again achieved the top sales position, and is expected to have a next generation chip that will outclass Nvidia's.
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Isn't this obvious? Desktop with desktop parts. The average gamer only wants sufficient performance to run games, not the overkill of the high end graphics parts, or absolute waste like the Mac Pro's workstation parts and cores games will never use. It's easy to get sufficient performance and typical Apple margins into a 1100? box with integrated graphics and one open slot, or 1300? box with 8800/3870 class graphics built in. I'm certain of that, because I just bought a computer like that with nothing but quality parts, and the total without OS was 850?. I'd have paid a couple hundred more to make the machine a Mac with the option of running OS X officially, but there's no way I'd pay two and half times as much and only get the same performance (Mac Pro).
We're talking about different types of gamers, if you haven't noticed.
I keep saying that I'm not talking about the average gamer, but the one so devoted that they are willing to spend upwards of $3,000 for a rig, exclusive of monitor. But you keep trying to steer the conversation back to those that are not relevant here.
Most of these gamers are NOT building their own boxes. If they were, then Alienware, VooDoo and others wouldn't have had that hi end market.
There are several hundred thousand of those every year. If Apple does this right, there is no reason why they can't cherry pick a substantial number of those from the hi end PC manufacturers.
Why do you think Dell bought Alienware, and Hp followed by buying VooDoo?
It wasn't for their business customers. They have their own higher end PCs for that market, as well as workstations, and servers.
It was for the hi end gaming market, and the caché they thought they would get by catering to them.
But, on the game sites, plenty of these people have been saying since Apple moved to Intel that they would get a Mac, and often, specifically a MacPro, if only the right cards were available.
Most of the laptops Sony and Toshiba sell are well under $1000. Real Premium. Please expand your knowledge of the computer industry past the shelves of Best Buy.
Toshiba has 5 models under $800. 2 models between $800 -$1000m 8 models from $1,000-$1500. 4 Models from $1,500 to $2000 and 8 models > $2,000.
So 7 sub $1000 vs 20 models above $1,000. Do they sell more Satellites than Tecras? Probably. But it is telling that they have more models above $2000 than below $1000. They have no models that appear at the $499 mark. Which the Dell Inspirons start at...so Toshiba's lineup starts nearly 50% ($699) more than Dell's ($499).
Gee...that sounds kinda premium...they leave the bottom end for Dell and HP but keep some volume starting at the lower middle end.
For Sony only the FZ series starts below $1000 at $799..and only one variant is that price: a 1.66Ghz T5450 that has a magnesium case. US, TZ, SZ, CR, NR, AR all start above $1000. The UX, TZ and AR series all start above $1500.
That sounds even more premium and it's real unlikely that Sony sells more bare bones FZs than the entire rest of their lineup. Note that the rest of the FZs are > $1000.
ATI had made at least two different cards for G5 systems.
That's what I'm saying, but they dropped them before the Mac Pros came out. When I spoke to ATi, after Apple went Intel, they said that EFI wasn't a problem for them, it was the sales numbers.
Toshiba has 5 models under $800. 2 models between $800 -$1000m 8 models from $1,000-$1500. 4 Models from $1,500 to $2000 and 8 models > $2,000.
So 7 sub $1000 vs 20 models above $1,000. Do they sell more Satellites than Tecras? Probably. But it is telling that they have more models above $2000 than below $1000. They have no models that appear at the $499 mark. Which the Dell Inspirons start at...so Toshiba's lineup starts nearly 50% ($699) more than Dell's ($499).
Gee...that sounds kinda premium...they leave the bottom end for Dell and HP but keep some volume starting at the lower middle end.
For Sony only the FZ series starts below $1000 at $799..and only one variant is that price: a 1.66Ghz T5450 that has a magnesium case. US, TZ, SZ, CR, NR, AR all start above $1000. The UX, TZ and AR series all start above $1500.
That sounds even more premium and it's real unlikely that Sony sells more bare bones FZs than the entire rest of their lineup. Note that the rest of the FZs are > $1000.
People keep thinking that Apple is elitist in their pricing, but they're not. they just choose not to compete in a cutthroat part of the market, where profits are slim to none.
As can be seen, they aren't the only company to do so.
People keep thinking that Apple is elitist in their pricing, but they're not. they just choose not to compete in a cutthroat part of the market, where profits are slim to none.
As can be seen, they aren't the only company to do so.
And there is also plenty of evidence that Apple is highly competitive, and often a little cheaper, when it comes to systems using the same processor model and other analogous specs. But for some reason the "HP cheapest notebook is $400 and Apple's is $1100" argument keeps popping up.
I enjoyed the post yesterday where the Psyster quad-core machine was several hundred dollars more than a similar HP PC.
The REAL premium makers are companies like Velocity Micro, Polywel, Asus, Sager, and a bunch of smaller ones.
I belatedly figured out your disconnect. A premium brand is like Onkyo, Denon or Sony. A boutique brand is like NAD, Harmon Kardon or Adcom that serves a small subset of the audio market (audiophiles mostly).
Sony, Toshiba, NEC, IBM, Apple are (or were in the case of IBM) premium mass market brands. Not boutique brands like Polywell or Velocity Micro.
An interesting tidbit is that Denon has #1 share in the US for surround sound receivers at 23% share.
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Apple, on the other hand is the Mac market, so they basically have to be everything to everybody.
And there is also plenty of evidence that Apple is highly competitive, and often a little cheaper, when it comes to systems using the same processor model and other analogous specs. But for some reason the "HP cheapest notebook is $400 and Apple's is $1100" argument keeps popping up.
I enjoyed the post yesterday where the Psyster quad-core machine was several hundred dollars more than a similar HP PC.
There are always going to be people who whine about this, and that can't be helped.
There are several kinds of these people.
Those who whine just because they always whine. They haven't matured.
Those who dislike Apple, so this seems like a good excuse to continue doing so as the other reasons keep sliding away.
Those who say they want to buy an Apple product, but can't (won't) pay for one, and are therefore unhappy.
Those who say that while THEY have an Apple product, Apple will never expand their sales unless they compete for the bottom feeders as well, regardless of profitless sales there.
Of course desktop market share is declining, they went from 100% to about 60% market share in 30 years. About 268 M PC have been sold WW in 2007, about 160 M were desktops (only 108 M were notebooks) even if the growth is negligeable it is still a huge segment and still will be for some years.
************************************
Anyway, my concern is more about models and choices for Apple's computer line-up, and all i've been saying is that I'd like Apple to offer more models in both categories: desktops and notebooks. I agree that they have done a terrific job for the last past years, and I'm glad they are growing like that, that fast. However, I think that they could offer more choices (not like Dell or HP are doing) but just like they have been doing for the MB Air, a new different model that addresses other needs from time to time, update the "dying" Mac mini or replace it with something else in the sub $1,000 price range, keep updating their products at Intel's pace (or so), mostly widen their offering to attract more people.
The only time I've recommended 4GB or more RAM is for switchers that will be heavy virtualization users.
Even without that, I think it's easy to use more memory. I have 6GB wired + active, 4GB more inactive and still 60k swapouts. This is all without a single "pro" application running.
That's what I'm saying, but they dropped them before the Mac Pros came out. When I spoke to ATi, after Apple went Intel, they said that EFI wasn't a problem for them, it was the sales numbers.
I think the dropped one was just because it was an AGP model.
One of them was introduced after the Mac Pro was released, for the G5s with PCIe.
Of course desktop market share is declining, they went from 100% to about 60% market share in 30 years. About 268 M PC have been sold WW in 2007, about 160 M were desktops (only 108 M were notebooks) even if the growth is negligeable it is still a huge segment and still will be for some years.
Mkay, granted that the US isn't the world but the Desktop sales are projected to be in decline. So that does substantiate the articles that talk about declining desktop sales. They simply are only talking about the US.
1.7% decline in desktop sales in Western Europe year-on-year.
So predominately desktop sales are increasing only in developing markets (Central Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa - CEMA and Asia) and likely dominated by the low profit margin, low cost segment.
This is not an area that Apple wants to compete in.
In their primary market (US) desktops are in decline. In their secondary market (Western Europe) desktops are also in decline.
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Anyway, my concern is more about models and choices for Apple's computer line-up, and all i've been saying is that I'd like Apple to offer more models in both categories: desktops and notebooks. I agree that they have done a terrific job for the last past years, and I'm glad they are growing like that, that fast. However, I think that they could offer more choices (not like Dell or HP are doing) but just like they have been doing for the MB Air, a new different model that addresses other needs from time to time, update the "dying" Mac mini or replace it with something else in the sub $1,000 price range, keep updating their products at Intel's pace (or so), mostly widen their offering to attract more people.
The mini could use an update. Hopefully the rumors of one are true.
They might offer a home server although their moves with Time Capsule seems to indicate otherwise.
I could see a cubish Mini with 2 3.5" drive bays. I think they would limit it with integrated graphics to keep from impacting iMac sales.
I don't see a tower. I'd buy a tower but I don't see one happening and I don't have a problem with that. I'll likely get a next rev mini and some kind of console to meet my gaming needs.
Comments
Vinea,
Your answered your own question, "PC desktop sales increased 12%..." so those are not declining.
Sorry, I was being imprecise. solipsism has better numbers. As I stated in a previous post the 12% number from your article was 12% for the entire PC market and not broken out by desktop or laptop.
If you don't know, the ratio between desktops and notebooks in PCs is still very close to 50/50 which is different from the Apple world: 60% for notebooks and 40% for desktops. Intel thinks that the notebooks sales will surpass the desktops sales in 2009/2010.
Which means what? It means all desktop sales are losing market share. If the desktop sales growth (if any) is below total market sales growth then desktops as a whole are losing share. Therefore "dying" if you like. Or mor accurately simply declining.
The growth of the top 5 manufacturers is still between 15 and 25%, not bad for people who are still selling towers (most of them anyway).
I've seen presentations from both Dell and HP that show that laptop sales are their primary growth areas. Toshiba sells no towers. Apple's mix you say is 60/40. Acer I didn't bother looking for.
So at MOST it's 3 of 5.
Wherever the iMac takes its sales from, it is insignificant since the industry itself is still growing in all segments.
I'm tired of looking up numbers for you guys only for you to nitpick them. YOU find a NPD or Gartner article that CLEARLY shows that desktop sales are growing relative to the total market.
Otherwise, desktop and tower shares in decline as clearly indicated by negative retail sales growth and other indicators. Desktop sales growth is likely what is becoming insignificant with much of the growth occuring in notebooks.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articl...es-decline.htm
"Notebooks continued to drive growth across the region with shipments recording an increase of over 43% year on year, while desktops suffered from the market contraction in Western Europe and declined by 1.7%, boosting the share of notebooks to over 55% of total EMEA shipments."
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUK21194708
Go nitpick that it's only the US and Europe numbers and desktops aren't in decline at all.
For a tower you simply can't sell at a premium .
You lost any credibility you had right there. There are a lot of companies would disagree including Apple. You say you would support Apple if they released a tower, but all you do is attack anyone who might want something different than what Apple currently offers. Apple gets the credit when it does amazing things, but it should also here it when needs are not being met. A community full of yes men doesn't help, especially when the incomming switchers aren't going to be as radical or loyal. You might be here to feel different or superior or whatever to the average computer user, but there are those of us here that the OS is the difference to.
You lost any credibility you had right there. There are a lot of companies would disagree including Apple.
Mkay. Name a premiuum brand (desktop) tower maker:
Sony. Gone.
Toshiba. Gone.
IBM. Gone.
Apple sells workstations. Not premium branded desktop towers.
Dell and HP DO sell premium towers at the high end but they are high volume sellers that drove the above companies out of the market.
The only "premium" tower makers cater pretty much exclusively to the gamer market. Even there Alienware is now part of Dell.
The conclusion is that while you can STILL be a premium brand notebook maker (Sony, Toshiba, etc), you no longer can in the tower market. It's a commodity market with commodity pricing.
It would be interesting to know how many high end XPS systems Dell actually sells.
You say you would support Apple if they released a tower, but all you do is attack anyone who might want something different than what Apple currently offers.
And all you do is constantly whine that Apple doesn't make an xMac in nearly every thread here.
Apple gets the credit when it does amazing things, but it should also here it when needs are not being met. A community full of yes men doesn't help, especially when the incomming switchers aren't going to be as radical or loyal. You might be here to feel different or superior or whatever to the average computer user, but there are those of us here that the OS is the difference to.
Apple has a certain strategy and it appears to be working quite well in balancing user needs with maintaining margins and ASP. What no one has shown to date is that the balance would be better with an xMac than without. Either margins or ASP suffers without much indications that sales would improve to the vastly higher sales (2X or more) needed to MAINTAIN current desktop revenue much less exceed it.
That Apple has decided to ignore certain makets it deems unprofitable for them to pursue is unfortunate for you. But not necessarily for Apple.
Sales of Mac Pros will never be high enough to drive the graphics card market.
On the other hand, a mid range consumer Mac where the user can choose his own video card definitely would do that.
"Drive" the graphics card market? Where did you learn that phrase?
I'm not talking about "driving" any market. I'm talking about a company such as ATI deciding they can sell enough cards to make a profit. They've done it before when the only Apples that accepted graphics cards were Powermacs. I bought several myself, because Apple didn't offer a powerful enough card, or didn't offer the control panel for the cards they did offer, or didn't include the hardware features the other cards offered.
But sales of the Powermac dropped to the point where it didn't pay for ATI to bother any longer.
Now that sales of the Mac Pro are up, they're putting their toe into the water again.
But they have to give us their top of the line cards. We'll see this summer, when both ATI, which is considered to be the company to get in front of the gpu race again, and Nvidia have new lines out.
,
But sales of the Powermac dropped to the point where it didn't pay for ATI to bother any longer.
Now that sales of the Mac Pro are up, they're putting their toe into the water again.
ATI had made at least two different cards for G5 systems.
High end ≠ new and exciting. High end is just the fastest stuff that is out. nVidia has held the crown for a long time now. They are not in a position where they *can* be desperate.
They havent held much of anything. their cards are not that much better.
Right now, if you read the web sites devoted to this, it's looking as though ATI will trump them shortly, in the summer.
This is always a precarious position to be in. It's not like the cpu business, where one misstep can lead to serious problems. GPU's come out with too much regularity, and the purchase isn't a big deal.
It's believed that Nvidia is doing this because they want to take attention away from ATI, which has again achieved the top sales position, and is expected to have a next generation chip that will outclass Nvidia's.
Isn't this obvious? Desktop with desktop parts. The average gamer only wants sufficient performance to run games, not the overkill of the high end graphics parts, or absolute waste like the Mac Pro's workstation parts and cores games will never use. It's easy to get sufficient performance and typical Apple margins into a 1100? box with integrated graphics and one open slot, or 1300? box with 8800/3870 class graphics built in. I'm certain of that, because I just bought a computer like that with nothing but quality parts, and the total without OS was 850?. I'd have paid a couple hundred more to make the machine a Mac with the option of running OS X officially, but there's no way I'd pay two and half times as much and only get the same performance (Mac Pro).
We're talking about different types of gamers, if you haven't noticed.
I keep saying that I'm not talking about the average gamer, but the one so devoted that they are willing to spend upwards of $3,000 for a rig, exclusive of monitor. But you keep trying to steer the conversation back to those that are not relevant here.
Most of these gamers are NOT building their own boxes. If they were, then Alienware, VooDoo and others wouldn't have had that hi end market.
There are several hundred thousand of those every year. If Apple does this right, there is no reason why they can't cherry pick a substantial number of those from the hi end PC manufacturers.
Why do you think Dell bought Alienware, and Hp followed by buying VooDoo?
It wasn't for their business customers. They have their own higher end PCs for that market, as well as workstations, and servers.
It was for the hi end gaming market, and the caché they thought they would get by catering to them.
But, on the game sites, plenty of these people have been saying since Apple moved to Intel that they would get a Mac, and often, specifically a MacPro, if only the right cards were available.
Most of the laptops Sony and Toshiba sell are well under $1000. Real Premium. Please expand your knowledge of the computer industry past the shelves of Best Buy.
Toshiba has 5 models under $800. 2 models between $800 -$1000m 8 models from $1,000-$1500. 4 Models from $1,500 to $2000 and 8 models > $2,000.
So 7 sub $1000 vs 20 models above $1,000. Do they sell more Satellites than Tecras? Probably. But it is telling that they have more models above $2000 than below $1000. They have no models that appear at the $499 mark. Which the Dell Inspirons start at...so Toshiba's lineup starts nearly 50% ($699) more than Dell's ($499).
Gee...that sounds kinda premium...they leave the bottom end for Dell and HP but keep some volume starting at the lower middle end.
For Sony only the FZ series starts below $1000 at $799..and only one variant is that price: a 1.66Ghz T5450 that has a magnesium case. US, TZ, SZ, CR, NR, AR all start above $1000. The UX, TZ and AR series all start above $1500.
That sounds even more premium and it's real unlikely that Sony sells more bare bones FZs than the entire rest of their lineup. Note that the rest of the FZs are > $1000.
Try again.
(Sources were Toshiba Direct and Sony Style)
ATI had made at least two different cards for G5 systems.
That's what I'm saying, but they dropped them before the Mac Pros came out. When I spoke to ATi, after Apple went Intel, they said that EFI wasn't a problem for them, it was the sales numbers.
Toshiba has 5 models under $800. 2 models between $800 -$1000m 8 models from $1,000-$1500. 4 Models from $1,500 to $2000 and 8 models > $2,000.
So 7 sub $1000 vs 20 models above $1,000. Do they sell more Satellites than Tecras? Probably. But it is telling that they have more models above $2000 than below $1000. They have no models that appear at the $499 mark. Which the Dell Inspirons start at...so Toshiba's lineup starts nearly 50% ($699) more than Dell's ($499).
Gee...that sounds kinda premium...they leave the bottom end for Dell and HP but keep some volume starting at the lower middle end.
For Sony only the FZ series starts below $1000 at $799..and only one variant is that price: a 1.66Ghz T5450 that has a magnesium case. US, TZ, SZ, CR, NR, AR all start above $1000. The UX, TZ and AR series all start above $1500.
That sounds even more premium and it's real unlikely that Sony sells more bare bones FZs than the entire rest of their lineup. Note that the rest of the FZs are > $1000.
Try again.
(Sources were Toshiba Direct and Sony Style)
Nice research.
Nice research.
People keep thinking that Apple is elitist in their pricing, but they're not. they just choose not to compete in a cutthroat part of the market, where profits are slim to none.
As can be seen, they aren't the only company to do so.
People keep thinking that Apple is elitist in their pricing, but they're not. they just choose not to compete in a cutthroat part of the market, where profits are slim to none.
As can be seen, they aren't the only company to do so.
And there is also plenty of evidence that Apple is highly competitive, and often a little cheaper, when it comes to systems using the same processor model and other analogous specs. But for some reason the "HP cheapest notebook is $400 and Apple's is $1100" argument keeps popping up.
I enjoyed the post yesterday where the Psyster quad-core machine was several hundred dollars more than a similar HP PC.
Nice research.
Thanks.
The REAL premium makers are companies like Velocity Micro, Polywel, Asus, Sager, and a bunch of smaller ones.
I belatedly figured out your disconnect. A premium brand is like Onkyo, Denon or Sony. A boutique brand is like NAD, Harmon Kardon or Adcom that serves a small subset of the audio market (audiophiles mostly).
Sony, Toshiba, NEC, IBM, Apple are (or were in the case of IBM) premium mass market brands. Not boutique brands like Polywell or Velocity Micro.
An interesting tidbit is that Denon has #1 share in the US for surround sound receivers at 23% share.
Apple, on the other hand is the Mac market, so they basically have to be everything to everybody.
No, they really don't.
And there is also plenty of evidence that Apple is highly competitive, and often a little cheaper, when it comes to systems using the same processor model and other analogous specs. But for some reason the "HP cheapest notebook is $400 and Apple's is $1100" argument keeps popping up.
I enjoyed the post yesterday where the Psyster quad-core machine was several hundred dollars more than a similar HP PC.
There are always going to be people who whine about this, and that can't be helped.
There are several kinds of these people.
Those who whine just because they always whine. They haven't matured.
Those who dislike Apple, so this seems like a good excuse to continue doing so as the other reasons keep sliding away.
Those who say they want to buy an Apple product, but can't (won't) pay for one, and are therefore unhappy.
Those who say that while THEY have an Apple product, Apple will never expand their sales unless they compete for the bottom feeders as well, regardless of profitless sales there.
I'm sure people can find other excuses as well.
Sorry, I was being imprecise. solipsism has better numbers.
No he doesn't. Here are the numbers we were looking for:
2007 numbers and 2008-2011 forecasts
Of course desktop market share is declining, they went from 100% to about 60% market share in 30 years. About 268 M PC have been sold WW in 2007, about 160 M were desktops (only 108 M were notebooks) even if the growth is negligeable it is still a huge segment and still will be for some years.
************************************
Anyway, my concern is more about models and choices for Apple's computer line-up, and all i've been saying is that I'd like Apple to offer more models in both categories: desktops and notebooks. I agree that they have done a terrific job for the last past years, and I'm glad they are growing like that, that fast. However, I think that they could offer more choices (not like Dell or HP are doing) but just like they have been doing for the MB Air, a new different model that addresses other needs from time to time, update the "dying" Mac mini or replace it with something else in the sub $1,000 price range, keep updating their products at Intel's pace (or so), mostly widen their offering to attract more people.
The only time I've recommended 4GB or more RAM is for switchers that will be heavy virtualization users.
Even without that, I think it's easy to use more memory. I have 6GB wired + active, 4GB more inactive and still 60k swapouts. This is all without a single "pro" application running.
That's what I'm saying, but they dropped them before the Mac Pros came out. When I spoke to ATi, after Apple went Intel, they said that EFI wasn't a problem for them, it was the sales numbers.
I think the dropped one was just because it was an AGP model.
One of them was introduced after the Mac Pro was released, for the G5s with PCIe.
I think the dropped one was just because it was an AGP model.
One of them was introduced after the Mac Pro was released, for the G5s with PCIe.
Which one was that, and what happened to it?
No he doesn't. Here are the numbers we were looking for:
2007 numbers and 2008-2011 forecasts
Of course desktop market share is declining, they went from 100% to about 60% market share in 30 years. About 268 M PC have been sold WW in 2007, about 160 M were desktops (only 108 M were notebooks) even if the growth is negligeable it is still a huge segment and still will be for some years.
Mkay, granted that the US isn't the world but the Desktop sales are projected to be in decline. So that does substantiate the articles that talk about declining desktop sales. They simply are only talking about the US.
Europe also shows declining desktop sales.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articl...es-decline.htm
1.7% decline in desktop sales in Western Europe year-on-year.
So predominately desktop sales are increasing only in developing markets (Central Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa - CEMA and Asia) and likely dominated by the low profit margin, low cost segment.
This is not an area that Apple wants to compete in.
In their primary market (US) desktops are in decline. In their secondary market (Western Europe) desktops are also in decline.
Anyway, my concern is more about models and choices for Apple's computer line-up, and all i've been saying is that I'd like Apple to offer more models in both categories: desktops and notebooks. I agree that they have done a terrific job for the last past years, and I'm glad they are growing like that, that fast. However, I think that they could offer more choices (not like Dell or HP are doing) but just like they have been doing for the MB Air, a new different model that addresses other needs from time to time, update the "dying" Mac mini or replace it with something else in the sub $1,000 price range, keep updating their products at Intel's pace (or so), mostly widen their offering to attract more people.
The mini could use an update. Hopefully the rumors of one are true.
They might offer a home server although their moves with Time Capsule seems to indicate otherwise.
I could see a cubish Mini with 2 3.5" drive bays. I think they would limit it with integrated graphics to keep from impacting iMac sales.
I don't see a tower. I'd buy a tower but I don't see one happening and I don't have a problem with that. I'll likely get a next rev mini and some kind of console to meet my gaming needs.