Comments on: Despite Growth, Apple Slips a Spot in U.S. Computer Sales Rankings

By: Enzo

Enzo — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:32:31 +0000

The indoctrination kit for the impressionable:

1. Apple
2. Obama
3. Global Warming
4. Democrats are good, Republicans are bad (both parties are bad)
5. Human life has no value, better to have empty planet (i.e., anything coming out of Hollywood, Newsweek, NYT, LA Times, and Times)

No wonder the country is being raped by crooks.

By: Bas

Bas — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:22:16 +0000

Market share does mean something. More macs is more mac software/support. This is a blog for mac users right? not for mac execs.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:44:15 +0000

I agree with “Mike” who cares about market share as long as you are selling something that is profitable, and The thing here is that apple DOESN’t want to rule the computer market, the same way Ferrari DOESN’T want to rule the Car industry there are dozens of PCs/Netbooks out there that offer you a lower price than a macbook but as I saw personaly before turning to mac, The also use the cheapest parts possible to lower these prices. All of that publicity over 120 GB HDD they dont tell you they are using 5400 RMP Ide disks or 600MHZ Ram instead of apple’s 1066 Mhz put those low-end components in a macbook and apple could sell them at 800 bucks.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:14:38 +0000

I don’y believe it’s all price. I personally would have bought an iMac if they were available with a matte screen. instead

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:46:08 +0000

More is not better! GM was the largest car manufacturer in the world for many years, but did they build a quality product with a high profit margin?

By: Michael G.

Michael G. — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:36:49 +0000

Let’s not mix profits with share. I think Apple cares far less about share as long as it remains strongly profitable. They are selling more machines than the last quarter at sustainable price points. I don’t think they care as much about losing a few fractional percentage points to their low margin counterparts. If share is all you need, Dell could sell all its computers for $1 and watch its share skyrocket. But it probably would shutter its facilities before shipping all those units.

What’s fascinating (and to me the real story) is that given an extremely tight (historically so) economy, Apple has managed to not only buck the race-to-the-bottom-pricing trend, but also thrive. I think 23%-31% growth in this economy is pretty remarkable. This brings up two questions for me:

What if … Apple actually begins to compete on price?

What can we expect … when world markets recover from the Great Recession?

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:22:18 +0000

These studies are meaningless now.
Apple and many other companies make all kinds of “computing” devices. The day of the PC as weathervane for companies like Apple or Dell, et al is over. Computers are, and will be increasingly so, everywhere!
Apple knows this, thankfully.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:40:27 +0000

“I maintain that we’ve yet to see the fallout of selling so many cheap machines so quickly. Wait a couple years till they start showing significant failure rates, then we’ll see how long-term growth is affected.”

Yes Darrel, you must be right, because your version of reality is like (a cartoon edition) that of the Apple execs telling everyone that blu-ray is a bag of hurt and that they can’t build a machine under 800 dollars (it was 800 wasn’t it?)… just sad. It’s like they’ve decided to close their eyes very tightly, put their hands over their ears and start chanting “U can’t touch this”

I really hope they can break out of the vicious circle of make-belief where they think they can rule the computing business with machines costing over 1k usd.