Apple in ten years...... If they manage to keep an industry visionary, the same caliber of design and development engineers, and focused on product I am certain they;ll be around in some form or another. A number off issues do not get addressed by people when analyzing what will cause Apple to sink or swim, let's see if I can cover most of them:
1. While Apple has survived quite well playing to their 'niche' market, they have been pushing for marketshare, how might their marketshare be increasing when hardware sales hover around the 4% mark (US statistic; as there are no accurate worldwide statistics, Canada has typically been 3x the US average and the world average is around 2x US in sales only). Statistically marketshare can increase through attrition, meaning if I sell the same percentage of product year in and year out but my product outlasts yours by 300%, ie. new mac every 3 years vs new pc every year (extreme example); much of the competitors sales are going to replacement and not new consumers. This results in market gains that become very noticeable when there are rapid advances in one over another, I don't need to give any more examples than the Mhz myth, Apple maintained marketshare while PC users were scrambling to see who owned the 'fastest machine'. 2. Shift the approach, Style was a fantastic innovation in the world of beige and a rare black home computer, Apple being both an hardware and software company can be quite nimble in its approach, eg. how many firewire and USB peripherals existed before Apple made these interfaces standard on their machines? 3. The closed architecture, meaning 1 to a handful of manufacturers and very tight development strictures has allowed them to keep the platform 'pure' so their software does not have to jump through hoops to maintain interface quality with the hardware, this also leaves them with about 1/100th the number of virus variants they are susceptible to at all. 4....5......6..... I believe we could cover just about every aspect of any major, successful manufacturer, make no mistake Apple is in it for the money, marketshare is where that money is, but it is also in gross margin, Apple has been at about 22-25%, the other manufacturers have been starving to death at approx. 8%, that means Apple could drop to a 2% sales per annum and still weather any storm the industry throws at it. Do not limit your point of view, Apple advertises heavily in its large markets, I've not had more than a day go by in watching american television channels that I do not see an Apple ad, the Canadian market is about 1/10th the size and therefore I only see Apple ads in Canadian programming about 1-2 times per week. BTW, as pointed out earlier in the thread that ad was not from IBM, it was a reseller, IBM has not advertised there products, only their solutions for the last 10 years, they are chiefly a server market seller. That ad also does not compare at all with the commercials Apple has been producing, especially since '1984', second only to the 'I'd like to give the world a Coke...' commercial on worldwide popularity. They aired 1 spot in the superbowl and got free advertising from every news agency in the world for three months. I daresay the caliber of the commercials has faltered somewhat but what the heck, they still get that commercial aired at the advertising awards every other year or so. Mark -- Mac Canada is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Shop Canadian, visit Mantek Services <http://www.mantek.mb.ca> Low Prices That Will Keep YOU and Your MAC Smiling Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Mac Canada info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/mac-can.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-canada%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
