How can Apple increase Market Share?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I think it's widely accepted that our platform has the most stable and easy to use OS on the marked. We have beautiful HW lineup and the 'low end' models come bundled with attractive SW. Sadly Apple's marked share doesn't reflect these facts.



What do you think the company could do to better the situation? Low marked share is not all Apple's fault though. ISP's are often less than Mac friendly and not all banks support Macs for home banking for example and many state they wont do anything about it until Apple has some 10% or so share of the cake.



But what can Apple do about it. Write your ideas. I'll start with mine. And I'm not thinking of ideas like slashing the price by 10s of %. I'm thinking more inline of marketing.





1. Make some great OS X demo CD and distribute it with PC magazines. Demonstrate it's ease of use and how Macs just work out of the box. Emphasize the solidity of the hardware and it's design. Show how easy it is to plug in input and output devices. Even non Apple keyboard, mice and of course printers. Not so long ago I got a visit from an iMac user who was still using the puck on her iMac. She had no idea she could use 3rd party devices and had been mislead by a PC nerd. Needless to say she bought a new mouse. Destroy the myth that Macs can only use Apple HW and accessories.



Over to you
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 45
    One word:



    Marklar.



  • Reply 2 of 45
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    They could start making windows boxes. hahaha...



    We all know the answer to this, it's just a question of admitting it to ourselves.



    On a side note, in the next ten years internet services will be of paramount importance. Forget about silly web-based games that you may or may not be able to play, but streaming media, attachments, forms, financial services, web service itself (those less than co-operative ISPs). If these standards are not completely 'open', if the competitor successfully creates a defacto standard like M$ has done with Office, then Apple has a lot of fighting ahead. Defacto standards get created because the marketshare of any one solution just gets too big. The reason many smaller ISPs have limited mac support is as simple as they have a limited number of mac users -- simply put, macs are not worth their time. The ultimate disaster for Macs would be to have the "Office" situation repeat itself throughout the the 'wired' world. Not even the fastest PM will help Apple if that happens.



    Of course it isn't that dire, yet. OSX is part of the solution, but Apple must have technologies in place that allow Macs to further extend the hand of compatibility when others in the industry will not.



    They could avoid all this by having a larger installed base/bigger market-share. How? Better price performance is part of it, as are more modern price points. But also, the issues of 'compatibility' and all the FUD that surrounds that, have to be reassuringly, convincingly, adressed.
  • Reply 3 of 45
    Recruit legions of EmaNs to convert the clueless at windows message boards... <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 4 of 45
    bellebelle Posts: 1,574member
    [quote]Originally posted by Brad:

    <strong>One word:



    Marklar.</strong><hr></blockquote>

    But is that <a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/img/content/characters/87a.gif"; target="_blank">Marklar</a> or <a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,496270,00.asp"; target="_blank">Marklar</a>?



    Alternatively, Apple could increase market share by murdering Windows users.
  • Reply 5 of 45
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    But their computers would still be counted!
  • Reply 6 of 45
    Standards... Adoption and Creation of standards. Make it so that windows users do not need windows. Web services, i think, are apples way of doing this as long as microsoft does not make the standards proprietary (I have a feeling if they do this, there will be many lawsuits raised).
  • Reply 7 of 45
    They can start by lowering their prices.......
  • Reply 8 of 45
    bellebelle Posts: 1,574member
    [quote]Originally posted by Matsu:

    <strong>But their computers would still be counted!</strong><hr></blockquote>

    Ah, I've been thinking this through. If your parents are Windows users, then you are likely to grow up a Windows user. Therefore, Apple finds current Windows users, and slaughters their babies at birth.



    I mean clearly it's not going to be quite as popular with consumers as the whole "Switch" thing, but I thing the idea has legs.



    Alternatively, Apple could create a real Windows virus that only affects Windows users. Some smallpox variant or suchlike.



    Sure, it's going to take a while, but as the number of people buying Windows computers decreases, Apple's share will increase.



    [ 10-04-2002: Message edited by: Belle ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 45
    spread rumours of impending takeovers or court action about Bill Gates and a rhino named Simon....make the rest up yourself!!
  • Reply 9 of 45
    chweave1chweave1 Posts: 164member
    PLUS, apple needs to continue with its policy towards digital music and such. I know a TON of pc users who despise microsoft, sony, and such for their big brotherish policies towards digital rights.
  • Reply 11 of 45
    attack homeless people in their sleep and tattoe apple logo's all over them, when its shown on tv....free advertising
  • Reply 12 of 45
    kelibkelib Posts: 740member
    [quote]Originally posted by leviathan:

    <strong>attack homeless people in their sleep and tattoe apple logo's all over them, when its shown on tv....free advertising</strong><hr></blockquote> Common leviathan, you can do better than that. It's a serious issue. Should Apple reassess their core markets, offer low cost solutions for currently PC only markets like the financial sector? Be creative!
  • Reply 13 of 45
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    The issue I have with the low cost market is: Sure, Apple could make a stripped down machine, hardly more than a terminal - but would that be a Mac? Apple sells complete, self-contained systems. Their whole "digital hub" strategy requires them to. Apple could leave off all the goodies that prevent them from getting under $1K, but what if the purchaser decided to get one of their peripherals and it didn't work? Or they tried using Apple's multimedia software and got frustrated by the severely deficient bandwidth on cheap motherboards, and the lackluster performance of the things attached to them?



    If you're talking corporate and business desktops, first remember that corporations don't pay retail. Then, remember that they bid, and Apple is an extremely aggressive bidder (given the chance, they'll beat Dell by thousands of dollars on a small business purchase). I don't really see that as a problem. iMacs and eMacs both would make perfectly good business desktops - although, frankly, the iMac won't be perfect for the job until the 17" monitor's on the low end.



    The only thing I can see Apple doing along these lines was actually demonstrated by Jobs a long time ago: Netbooting to iMacs (in his demo). There was a diskless iMac - dependent on either a CD or a NetBoot server - in the original design, but neither Apple nor the market was ready yet. But Apple is getting into servers now, and they now have a much, much better OS for serving and for networking, and a much tidier infrastructure option - wireless - especially once it goes to 802.11g.



    I can see Apple doing that. After all, OS X Server can serve Windows accounts, too, so an intrepid IT director wouldn't have to get rid of her PC desktops to deploy this solution. And given that Apple is building massive clustering bandwidth with dual fibre channel into their servers and (according to rumors, but this is an easy strategy to guess) building system-level clustering support into OS X Server, the servers will be incredibly easy to scale up as needed. But I don't think Apple will do this for a while yet. They're just now assembling the first pieces of this strategy, even though its first public demonstration was in 1998.
  • Reply 14 of 45
    You don't understand...Apple doesn't NEED to stripe down a Mac to sell it at a competitive price.



    The eMac is set to go at a lower price, the problem is that it's overpriced. If Apple wanted they could sell the eMac for $800 EASY, without stripping it down. It's already stripped down!
  • Reply 15 of 45
    Heck, they could and should just sell all their computers at developer disount prices.
  • Reply 16 of 45
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    You'll notice I'm not the one griping about prices, though all of JYD comments about price are exactly correct.
  • Reply 17 of 45
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    [quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:

    <strong>You don't understand...Apple doesn't NEED to stripe down a Mac to sell it at a competitive price.



    The eMac is set to go at a lower price, the problem is that it's overpriced. If Apple wanted they could sell the eMac for $800 EASY, without stripping it down. It's already stripped down!</strong><hr></blockquote>



    And you know this how?



    Hint: Their average margin on hardware is 27% or so. More at the high end, less at the low end. Last I heard, their margin at the bottom end is around 10%. You're talking about a 20% price cut.



    I would be amazed if Apple is making money on eMacs hand over fist. They're targeted at the price-conscious educational market, after all.



    Unless you can provide an itemized list of Apple's actual expenses, I'm going to have a lot of trouble believing that Apple is pocketing anywhere near 20% of the price of an eMac.



    Oh, and the eMac is hardly stripped down relative to most cheap PCs. It has solid onboard graphics (not the Intel chipsets shipping on most low-end PC towers), powered FireWire, two USB busses, 10/100 base-T autosensing Ethernet that can automatically compensate if you hook it up to another computer without a crossover cable, a 16 Watt amplifier attached to large (for computer) good quality speakers, a flat screen and a solid kidproof case. The motherboard has vastly superior I/O bandwidth, and comparable real-world processor bus bandwidth.



    Fact: If you try to come up with a PC that has everything an eMac has, you're going to shoot past $800 pretty quickly - and that's if you can find one. Adding features via PCI cards isn't the same, because then they all compete for the PCI bus instead of getting their own dedicated channels. And, of course, what you'll end up with is not going to be anywhere near as compact, rugged, or simple to set up and keep up as an eMac.



    [ 10-05-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]



    [ 10-05-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
  • Reply 18 of 45
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    As with any large corporation, the books are cooked. The margin could be more than 10% if they wanted it to be.
  • Reply 19 of 45
    More advertising! They have $4,000,000,000, surely they can spend some of it on advertising in the UK.



    You only see apple adverts occasionally here, and even then they're not very good. They make nothing of the fact that Macs run on an operating system that doesn't crash, is hellishly fast and and has amazing graphics, but which you hardly have to set up at all, all you would learn from the adverts is that the computer has a flat screen on an anglepoise-type neck,



    My classmates know I'm a Mac user by the fact that I almost have to go to the medical room every time we use the Windoze PCs in IT, one of them said to me shortly after the release of the new iMac "Hey, have you seen that new Applemac PC, the screen can move by itself" Oh God! But when they ask me about my computer they just can't understand how it can run without Windoze 2000.



    Also, a more modular computer, the G4 is pretty good, mine should last me quite a few more years, but it's still not really customisable enough. for people who want to build their own computers.



    If marklar was realeased they'd have to make it pretty expensive to benifit I think.



    Andrew
  • Reply 20 of 45
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    [quote]Originally posted by chweave1:

    <strong>PLUS, apple needs to continue with its policy towards digital music and such. I know a TON of pc users who despise microsoft, sony, and such for their big brotherish policies towards digital rights.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Apple needs to get the word out about this stuff, not just do it. Something like: Like your privacy? Then why are you using a PC?



    My brother, a pretty staunch anti-Apple person (not the vocal kind), is coming up today so that we can go to the Apple Store so he can look at an iBook. Why? Because he actually read the license agreement for XP. I wonder how many people do that. They should scroll it in big letters, star wars style for everyone to see. Then a apple.com/switch shot.
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