RSSThe end of the PC pothole, for everyone but Apple
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published March 17, 2009, 2:27 PM
The news from the latest NPD report on PC retail unit sales in the US last month was surprisingly very upbeat, for nearly all manufacturers but one. If you were to place a flat two-by-four stretching across the PC unit sales figures for February 2009 over to February 2008, you'd find the incline tips down...toward the older year. Windows-based PC unit sales rose by a fabulous 22% annual rate, NPD estimates, although the firm is declining to provide exact numbers to the press.
If you walked across that two-by-four, though, you'd want to avoid falling into the deep chasm that was the fourth quarter of last year.
But walking the plank this last month was Apple. Without a netbook product line and selling at a premium, consumers in this otherwise bleak economy turned away from Apple last month, even though they didn't turn away from computers in general. Mac sales overall fell by 16% annually, as NPD Vice President for Industry Analysis Stephen Baker confirmed to Betanews this afternoon.
If last year's sales figures represented consumers embracing the Mac again, this last month's represents an all-out rejection. In a month where the Windows-based laptop segment alone saw a 36% rise in sales -- an indication that the holiday blues have ended for PC-buying consumers -- MacBook unit sales dropped by 7%.
This morning, some of the Mac faithful were hoping that Apple would announce a new Mac tablet, or large form-factor iPhone or Mac netbook, citing touchscreen and touch-device patents Apple has been accumulating. That didn't happen today, and perhaps it's for a reason: Could Apple's strategy be to weather this storm by continuing to sell MacBooks for a premium, maintaining a high margin, even though it will sell fewer units? Conceivably, bringing out a netbook now, even if it were successful, would mean lower margins for Apple that could undercut Mac sales.
Stephen Baker, talking with Betanews today, agreed, adding this: "While I do believe they need a cheaper all-encompassing portable computing device I don't believe it should be branded or sold as a Mac," Baker told Betanews. "There is too much danger in cannibalization in adding a very low-cost device into a high-priced line. On the other hand a high-end [iPod] Touch -- with most of the features one might expect in a netbook, but purposely not marketed as a Mac -- is an upsell within the Touch line and therefore offers greater protection to the high margins in the Macbook line."
Average selling prices for MacBooks did decline by about 7% annually last month, NPD reported, though this is during a month when the rest of the non-netbook market's ASPs declined by 22%.
whether your a pc-dude or a mac-dude, they each have their goodies and their doo-dees. as well.
why can't mac-dudes just get along, instead of always mc'doodooing on pc's?
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|And as you post demonstrates, it seems there are far more PC folks worried about the platform they claim to have no interest in than the reverse.
Here's a suggestion. Use the machine that serves your needs, and don't worry about the OS you don't use.
And there is no PC/Mac hardware issue. They are both PCs internally. Its past time for that debate to cease! Anyone still debating that is past simply announcing their ignorance - its moved into stupidity.
The irony is that this article is simply fanboy bait.
'PC' sales, including the Mac, are suffering compared to Netbook sales, especially in the European and world markets where NetBook sales are dramatically higher than in the US. ALL of the higher price point machine sales are down relative to the low cost Netbook sales. This has nothing to do with Mac versus PC.
Meanwhile, the REAL news, BN totally blows coverage of IBM's in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $6.5 billion in cash
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|ya know i'd love to live by that motto but im tired of picking up bricks laid by ie8 from said pc owners on my nice green mac lawn.
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|Sorry folks, BOTH Mac and PC fanboys trying to differentiate the machines based upon hardware are fools.
"No dude. With Apple you get overpriced proprietary hardware and MacOS, and with a PC you get reasonably priced interchangeable hardware and Windows.
Oh, and there is such a thing as a non-Windows PC, Linux anyone?"
Oh brother! LOL!!!
Sorry "dude". Mac Hardware is NOT proprietary. It simply uses an industry standard TCM originally developed, in part by Intel, to authenticate OSX.
And sorry, dimwit Mac fanboy, you lost your whine with the PC when Apple became an adherent of the Intel Roadmap.
And yet another Bozo shows up in this fanboy circus! Geesh...
Deal with it fanboys.
The Mac is simply a PC that runs OSX, as well as other environments. The Only variance is in non-critical external design features - all of which are secondary to the Intel Roadmap. And the use of a TCM is by no means limited in the Intel Roadmap. It's use too is compliant.
What is hilarious is that so many of the illumined(sic) IT intelligentsia here still don't get that the Mac is simply an incarnation of the Intel Roadmap - it IS a PC. Duh!
Debating the hardware misses the point ENTIRELY!
But hey, nothing represents both sides' ignorance better than this asinine debate.
And to the degree that this debate continues, it just shows how oblivious the PC and Mac fanboys are with regards to having any coherent semblance of a clue as to what a PC or a Mac is.
And BN again brings out the idiot fanboys with an article that erroneously tries to draw a distinction focused on Apple instead of simply a general market segment based upon price!
Congrats BN on the gutter journalism. The sad thing is that I am beginning to wonder if the folks at BN actually recognize the nature of the nonsense.
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|Speaking of TCM, I wonder if the chip works with Vistas Bitlocker?
Or maybe I'm getting that confused with TPM..
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|Its essentially a semantic difference.
Trusted Computing Module and Trusted Platform Module. (I'm not sure if there are any trademarks or trade/development group naming rights involved...)
And they have been included in most PCs for some time now and are provided for in the Intel Roadmap, as well as game consoles (to make them platform centric).
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|"No dude. With Apple you get overpriced proprietary hardware and MacOS, and with a PC you get reasonably priced interchangeable hardware and Windows."
No dude! With windows you get crappy low budget hardware and design and you have to put up with redmond and windows. I was a faithful windows user until a couple of years ago. I switched to the macintosh and will never look back. Apple makes superior products. My mac even runs windows better than my Dell ever did.... As far as netbooks go. My neighbor is now on his third dell netbook. The first one fell apart. The second one wouldn't stop crashing. Each of those cost under $500. His new one seems to work OK but he paid $1500. What does that say about Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS?.... Exactly, You get what you pay for. I have learned that with my Macintosh. You will too if you will but purchase one.
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|"No dude! With windows you get crappy low budget hardware and design and you have to put up with redmond and windows."
Er...so all PCs run Windows, right?
"Apple makes superior products."
A matter of opinion...plus Apple does some stuff better than Windows, while Windows does some stuff better than Apple.
"My mac even runs windows better than my Dell ever did...."
Then you should have quit buying the crappy Dell configurations and start buying from the Dell Small Business division.
"As far as netbooks go. My neighbor is now on his third dell netbook. The first one fell apart. The second one wouldn't stop crashing. Each of those cost under $500. His new one seems to work OK but he paid $1500. What does that say about Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS?.... Exactly, You get what you pay for."
How does experience with three DELL netbooks explain anything about HP, Lenovo, and ASUS?
"His new one seems to work OK but he paid $1500."
Yeah...Dell doesn't sell any $1500 netbooks, even after full customization. Nice try :D
"You get what you pay for. I have learned that with my Macintosh."
So if my parents buy a Dell for $900 and use it heavily in their business for more than 5 years without a single hardware issue...?
Granted, sometimes hardware reliability is luck of the draw, but much of the same hardware PCs use are used in Mac's now anyway. To an extent you get what you pay for, but with research for ANY brand, wise purchases give you much more bang for buck. Buy a crappy Mac and purchase all the bells and whistles for it that drive up the price and you still get a crappy Mac. Same thing with PCs.
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|Let's see, there are a number of netbooks with Windows installed that haven't been replaced with Linux yet. Apple was about to replace a number of machines and the Apple faithful knew that and waited, as usual. Besides all that, the market was down as most people were still trying to recover from holiday debt.
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|" Besides all that, the market was down as most people were still trying to recover from holiday debt."
But...that's the thing. The market ISN'T down--didn't you read the article?
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|The market isn't down. You're right. It's Booming!
Obviously you cannot distinguish between a global minimum/maximum and a local min/max.
It may be up this week compared to last, but the entire market is radically lower than it was last summer!
Oh....but...but its so kompleeekated.....
LOL!
And to think that just several weeks ago BN was lamenting the down sales of PCs in general.
Anything to cater to the trolls and fanboys, huh BN? To hell with good reporting, just keep baiting the fanboys with your increasingly superfluous nonsense.
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|I highly doubt the reason behind the decline in sales is due to Apple not having a netbook, all PC manufacturers did not sell THAT many netbooks!
And besides, if you wanted an Apple netbook that badly you would have a MacBook Air.
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|The average selling price of a Pc is down to $556 - so half the people buying PC's is swapping out a $999 PC for a $299 one - nice margins there. So while Mac sales have dropped a little, with margins at 30%, Apple can afford margins to drop a little ... plus new macs were introduced in March - really indepth analysis of 30 days in a marketoplace without looking at the bigger picture - this is why the industry needs new analysts.
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|"It's no fun fun fun since daddy took the American Express away."
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|More misconcieved PC versus Apple nonsense.
And now PCs are equivalent to netbooks? Really?
And to think that just a few weeks ago BN was lamenting that Netbooks were taking abite out of PC sales...
But this isn't really about reporting or informing as much as it is about trying to MAKE a story.
How about re-framing the discussion in terms of tier pricing and seeing if it is not more 'higher priced units' versus lower priced units?
I think its fair to assume that ALL upper tier models across the board are selling less than the lower priced tier. Duh.
But then, we couldn't use the word 'Apple' to play to the lowest common denominator sensationalist climate here, would we?
Just another weather forecast whining 'when will it rain' when its sunny, and 'when will the sun return', when its rainy here at BN.
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|This is all speculation. Apple hasn't released sales figures for February, so anything purported to be factual on how much Apple sold in the last month is a guesstimate. Who is NPD? It seems like they are making stuff up in order to game Apple's stock.
So what if Apple doesn't have a player in the Netbook category. They have the iPhone @ $299 and the iPod Touch at price points between $199 - $399. These are comparable to Netbook prices. So in essence, yes, Apple does have a Netbook offering. It's called the iPhone/iPod Touch. And they sell a boat load of them. Plus, Apple makes a 30% commission off of every paid app a customer buys off of the app store. Does Asus/HP/Dell/MSI/Acer have a simliar revenue stream in place with their Netbooks? No? I didn't think so.
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|People buy apples on impulse and when they have money coming out there a**. Today that is not the case. So apple gets hit. But with AIG giving loans to their employee's it might help the sells next month..
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|I am always amazed how people just don't get it.
Apple has never been a volume play; it is a premium play. With superior design and implementation they can afford to book lower volumes with higher margins while increasingly pulling in ancillary revenue from the sale of media content and web services which, in contrast to hardware, have very high margins from a COGs perspective. Any drop in their cost (due to component cost reduction and/or volume) can be passed on to spur volume but still maintain margin while continuing to preserve the value of their premium brand.
In the end it is like BMW trying to price and market itself as a Chevy. Wrong target market. Cadillac tried to do this with the 'Cimmaron' (remember that disaster which nearly destroyed their brand?).
Bottom line is with Apple you get a Mac; with a PC you get commodity hardware and Windows.
Rob Durst
Technology and Business Development Consultant
www.durstgroup.com
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|"Bottom line is with Apple you get a Mac; with a PC you get commodity hardware and Windows."
No dude. With Apple you get overpriced proprietary hardware and MacOS, and with a PC you get reasonably priced interchangeable hardware and Windows.
Oh, and there is such a thing as a non-Windows PC, Linux anyone?
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