Prediction: Microsoft 50%: Apple 50% by 2015

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
My prediction is that by the year 2015 Apple will have equaled Microsoft's marketshare, with or sans Jobs. I am talking Macintoshes versus Windows PCs.



Why? Because Microsoft is moribund already. It is founded on software technology that hasn't really evolved for a while and will continue not to evolve because it is a company overrun by corporate mentality and marketeering.



More specifically: Apple's OpenCL with Grand Central Dispatch and Low Level Virtual Machine technologies will destroy Windows PCs. In short, Snow Leopard is the beginning of the end for Windows. Microsoft will try to catch up but the problem will be that they got used to the update game, while Apple got good at the breakthrough game. There is no comparison. Apple sits on a treasure trove of computing technology. Microsoft sits on a pile of turdware.



That is my prediction. We will see in 5 years.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    If anyone is going to take significant market share away from Microsoft in the future, it will be Google, not Apple.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    Tauron, You're talking about hardware. To get to 50%, Apple would have to sell the most hardware out of any hardware manufacturer and it's not Microsoft they are competing with here because some of those Macs will be running Windows. Apple would have to reduce their hardware prices significantly to achieve this.
  • Reply 3 of 15
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tauron View Post


    My prediction is that by the year 2015 Apple will have equaled Microsoft's marketshare, with or sans Jobs. I am talking Macintoshes versus Windows PCs.



    So you're saying Apple will sell more computers than HP, DELL and Apple combined are currently selling?



    Quote:

    More specifically: Apple's OpenCL with Grand Central Dispatch and Low Level Virtual Machine technologies will destroy Windows PCs.



    Do you actually know the first thing about what those are?
  • Reply 4 of 15
    Never!

    And I hope not!





    By 2015 it would probably be:



    Windows - 85%

    Mac OS X - 5%

    Chrome OS - 12%

    Other - 3%





    Mac OS X is big in the US at ~9%, but globally it is still at 3%.
  • Reply 5 of 15
    Right. The only way "the Mac" will grow to more than a single-digit percentage of the market is if Apple licenses its OS to other manufacturers. A lot of them.
  • Reply 6 of 15
    No way 50%. Depending how you count, double-digit might be doable. If iPhones, iPods, tablets and (hopefully future decent) AppleTV are added to the Macs, that is.
  • Reply 7 of 15
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Delusion can be comforting.
  • Reply 8 of 15
    groveratgroverat Posts: 10,872member
    Is there betting available here? What odds?
  • Reply 9 of 15
    piotpiot Posts: 1,346member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tauron View Post


    Prediction: Microsoft 50%: Apple 50% by 2015



    That is my prediction. We will see in 5 years



    I see you've put a lot of thought into this!
  • Reply 10 of 15
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    In the home market, this is a remote remote possiblity. In business? Even more unlikely. It takes longer than that to transition away from legacy products around which data and workflows are heavily reliant. Look at how long its taking Quark to die off.
  • Reply 11 of 15
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by piot View Post


    I see you've put a lot of thought into this!



  • Reply 12 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by piot View Post


    I see you've put a lot of thought into this!



    Well, we will see in five years- when Apple is still at 9% in 2014 it'll be pretty clear
  • Reply 13 of 15
    Wow -this speculative topic takes the cake - are people even trying to make convincing articles about Apple anymore? It just seems that multiple sites - this one included - simply recirculate and regurgitate anything speculative from blogs and rumor sites and post it as "news"...I mean, if I create a blog and say "Apple is creating an iMac for Mexico!!11!! It will be called the "eLmac"!!!11!!", will this sight post that nonsense as well?



    I mean, I know that headlines with the work "Apple in it gets a lot of clicks and additional links from aggregator sites, but please...this site should be above the rest.



    Anyhow, back on-topic: Apple will NOT be 50/50 by 2015. I love 'em to death, but they won't go from 8/9% to 50 in 5-6 years. No.
  • Reply 14 of 15
    Reasons 50% is not attainable

    -Business side. No option for edu iMac makes a pretty expensive option for a corporate desktop. Mini is too easy to steal and nobody who wants to keep their job is going to spend $900 on a 24" display. xServe is one size fits all and the only Mac with a quad core option is pretty steep in price, even against other xeon 3500 workstations. Certain types of machines such as rugged notebooks or mobile workstations not available. Many proprietary pieces of software are designed for windows. Lastly, total changeover is not cheap.



    - Consumer side. Many are just used to windows. while a step in the right direction, the $1699 15" MBP still has to compete against 15 and 17" notebooks half its price or less. Entry level mini's hard drive is still tiny and having spend extra money to hook up to a display other the aforementioned $900 cinema display may drive away bargain hunters looker for a Mac. The iMac can be too expensive for those look for a basic machine and not full featured enough for high end users. Will win on design and easy of use, will lose on power.



    Lastly, while GCD and OpenCL require too things that aren't readily available yet. 1) implementation of the APIs. If the program can't take advantage of those technologies, they don't matter. 2) They work best with more cores and higher end graphics. Apple's machines are designed for design and easy of use. Ironically, while they're they the only one that uses their operating system, they may be the computer maker least able to take advantage of snow leopard. Even if the APIs were in place, you're not going to see that much difference using a C2D with a 9400m.
  • Reply 15 of 15
    taurontauron Posts: 911member
    The bottomline is that Apple is evolving at an ever increasing pace while Windows is stagnant.



    From XP to Vista there was a devolution instead of an evolution and from Vista from Windows 7 they recovered some ground but it is still not that much more attractive than XP from a purely technical and experiential point. So basically the technology has been stagnant for about 8 years. 8 Years!!!



    Cocoa is now 64 bit and with Open CL and GCD technology writing applications that take full advantage of CPU and GPU is a breeze now. Expect developers to start writing applications for macs that takes a third of the effort compared to the same application for Windows but delivers 3-15 times more performance.



    That disparity is only going to increase in time since i) low level coding technologies are going to get honed while, ii) Windows will continue to be stagnant because an OS built on a rotting foundation of legacy DLLs and other junk simply cannot improve anymore. Microsoft also cannot chuck their OS and start anew as that would be handing over the market to Apple even faster.



    For those that say that 50% marketshare is not attainable because of price, I remind you that an enterprise level Windows PC is the same price or more expensive than Macs. If you buy a fairly standard $1000 PC desktop system, in 12 months it will be worth zero dollars as you won't be able to sell it at all. If you buy an iMac for, say, $1500, 12 months from now it will be worth about $1000 on the used market. In the meanwhile you are using a much much faster computer that is slicker, silent, has better display, etc, etc.



    In summary: Microsoft is a branch in the evolutionary tree that did well for a while but then became irrelevant and extinct.
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