Goldman Sachs initiated coverage of Apple Computer at “in-line,” noting that Apple is “one of the few companies in tech with the ability to consistently innovate and then monetize that innovation.”
Apple Macintosh Installed Base Set To Grow Again
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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” I am very tired somebody is confusing the words of “Apple” and “Mac”. It seems that the Apple is equal to Mac. No. At least now! The profits the current Apple Inc gained are from iPod, a kind of audio equipment. I am afraid how much of the profits can Apple Inc gain for her poor machine and OS.
Let me stress my point. Apple Inc., now, is a maker of the audio equipment instead of the computer. For such company, don’t waste our too much time on the OSnews.
”
agree. And thats what i have tried to explain here. Subtract the exceptional ipod performance and you’ll see the mac sales are tragic. Is it possible that no one remembers that apple in 1993 was pc vendor #1 in USA with more than 13% share and now is # 10 with 2.8% ?
Would the PC industry really be better if Apple were to die, as some seem to wish!?
” People could stop buying overpriced and underperforming machines all-appearance and no-substance and besides, it would be wonderful seeing that jerk called steve jobs in ruin. He’s been one of the most unpleasant men on the pc industry. His ego and selfishness are worst than Bill Gates'”
Wow. Who died and made you god of everyone’s purchasing decisions? Wanting Apple to go under and Steve Jobs to suffer seems pretty selfish and cruel of you. Did an Apple employee run over your dog or something?
You don’t hear Apple buyers complaining about their supposedly underpowered substance-free machines, do you? I wonder how many people wish they hadn’t bought their cheap Dell after it got infected with spyware 6 months after the delivery man dropped it off?
Is Apple somehow inflating prices of all the other cheap, shoddy computers out there? Does a high performance BMW somehow inflate the prices of cheap Ford compact car? I don’t think so. The market supports Apple just fine. I don’t see why you should care or why it should even bother you. Don’t like Apple? Fine, then don’t buy one! No one is forcing you to or expecting you to or spitting on you if you don’t.
What is it like to harbor so much negativity? Wait, don’t answer that.. I’d rather not know.
Apple isn’t going anywhere. Deal with it. The only programmers who have dropped the platform could not compete with Apple’s, or another competitor’s products. The end has been forecast for Apple for some time. Hasn’t happened. Nor is it going to happen for the foreseeable future. As long as the installed base keeps growing and those people continue to purchase software, there will always be a market for Apple. Semper Fi
Right… the OS X GUI is slow. When will the trolls give up? Open up many large apps (i.e. Netbeans, Office, Photoshop and MATLAB). Start compiling something in the background (i.e. install something via fink). Do all these tasks concurrently. You won’t see a slow down when switching apps. I don’t on my Powerbook.
It’s slow. I’ll grant it takes a fair bit to make it slow*er* (although no more than any other system), but it’s still slow to start with.
As for a slow GUI, do all the above tasks, and play a DVD. Then hit Expose. Realize that all the effects are done in realtime and the DVD is still playing. Now, try doing that in your favorite OS/WM (KDE, GNOME, Windows, etc). Then come back and tell me the OS X GUI is slow.
It’s slow. There’s a noticable and intrusive lag accompanying nearly all interactions with the GUI, from clicking on a menu through switching tabs in safari to right-clicking icons on the Dock even when it *isn’t* loaded down with multiple applications.
The “speed” of Expose would be more impressive if all the gruntwork wasn’t actually being done by the GPU.
Well I’m not a basher, and I’d love it if Apple would put real pressure on MS. I would say it wouldn’t hurt Apple to offer a low end machine in the $600 range to compete with HP and Emachines.
A windoze users likes the windoze, a Mac users likes the Mac, a Linux user likes Linux and I don’t really see what the problem is.
Everyone needs something different from their computer and you don’t HAVE to like the other manufactures. I just find my OS works well for me and I guess you guys like your OS’s too. Doesn’t mean you have to slam the opposition or predict the demise of those that are different.
If I do a .Doc and need to use it on Linux, that program just needs to open it and be efficent enough to edit it… That’s all there is to it for me.
BTW
Don’t be offensive to people… “Macs are for Homos” comes across as the words of a 13yr old boy who is unsure about his sexuality…
If you think its slow you haven’t used one recently. Macs are completely responsive as of OS X 10.3 and G5’s.
I agree the old systems have some UI speed problems, but that is because apple is breaking new ground by taking advantage of DX9 capable GPUs. Once all the 2 year and older machines get replaced within the next couple years, no one will remember that macs were slow. Plus, with each OS iteration, Quickdraw has been getting phased out and Quartz becoming the rendering engine of choice(Quartz also getting drastically better each time).
However i do agree that the Macs future is not as bright as some think. As the US (Macs’ largest market by far) economy goes stale, as it will thanks to our overspending government, discretionary spending will decrease drastically. This will hurt the Mac market much more than cheaper PC vendors, because poorer people don’t/can’t buy Macs. Its a bleak future, gentlemen.
It’s flame bait like this post that makes me wonder why the people running this site would even ask for money? What is it with the people on this site? Get over it, I use 2 Macs at home after using Linux as my desktop OS for 10 years, do you really think myself or other Mac users really give a rats a$$ about your attitude to our underpowered, over priced hardware? I’ll stick to my Dual G5 and you can keep using whatever you want, but how about the site admins stop allowing this flame bait?
I am thoroughly impressed about the number of people who think it is so important to tell the rest of the readers of OSNews that Apple is dying. That the users of the platform try to tell the opposite can hardly surprise.
As this is post number 115 or thereabouts on that subject, I am more and more confident that Apple is doing very very well.
If it really was dying as a few in the discussion are suggesting, nobody would care.
I sincerely wonder why people are so upset about if Apple is doing well or not. Would the world go under if Apple suddently had 6% Market share? Would they loose their jobs? Perhaps if they were making malware solely for the PC-market, but the number still seems to inferior to my ears. Perhaps it is just good old Angst.
If you think its slow you haven’t used one recently. Macs are completely responsive as of OS X 10.3 and G5’s.
I own a 1Ghz iBook.
I regularly use G5s.
Brand spanking new Macs _still_ have laggy UIs. Interestingly enough, newer Macs aren’t as much faster as you’d expect, given their raw performance increase over older machines.
Personally I think OS X’s UI speed problems are in the software, not the hardware. Macs are damn fast machines, from a raw hardware performance perspective.
Once all the 2 year and older machines get replaced within the next couple years, no one will remember that macs were slow.
They’ve got a long way to go before raw hardware speed is going to be sufficient, from what I’ve seen.
Plus, with each OS iteration, Quickdraw has been getting phased out and Quartz becoming the rendering engine of choice(Quartz also getting drastically better each time).
It was so slow to start with it didn’t have anywhere else to go but up. Certainly, Quartz is far, far faster than it used to be – but OS X still feels laggy to use for anything more than trivial load.
Luca,
You just proved that you don’t understand bugger all.
The only thing developers are interested in is the installed base. They give a fuck about how many computers have been sold in a certain period (market share).
All they want to know is “how many potential customers do I have on this platform?”. That’s the installed base (sans people with hopelessly old hardware where some piece of software wouldn’t run).
GOT IT?
“I would say it wouldn’t hurt Apple to offer a low end machine in the $600 range to compete with HP and Emachines.”
eMac- 549$ us. you can buy it today from apple.com.
BTW, are these the same all-knowing, Godly ‘analysts’ who predicted $7bn sales for Itanic?
Sorry, couldn’t resist the cheap shot.
You can certainly argue that, but not with *that* article. It loses on line 1 – 2.8GHz P4 beats the crap out of a 1.2GHz G4. You don’t need to pay for anti-virus on a PC (get AVG for free). And Dell’s prices are rather a lot cheaper now (they’re selling a basic box with monitor in Canada for $599 *Canadian*. The cheapest eMac I can find on the Canadian store is $1,099 Canadian).
I’m considering doing an upgrade for my partner’s computer. I can spec up a PC in an Antec Aria small-form case with a basic micro ATX motherboard, 80GB hard disk and 256MB RAM for CAN$250. This is using an existing monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, but heck, at least the PC *gives* you that flexibility. At the low end and when dealing with this kind of situation, the Mac just isn’t cheaper than the PC. For laptops and higher-end machines you can make a case.
“This is true for all systems. They will never go into an energy saving mode when calculating your stupid, childish savers. Put a blank black screen and that’s it. Today’s screen don’t burn in anymore, anyways…”
Erm, yes they do. A CRT is a CRT is a CRT. Burn-in has never been solved, though it takes a little longer to happen these days. Leave your desktop up on a CRT monitor for a few days and it’ll burn in, guaranteed. It doesn’t affect LCDs, admittedly, but even the most modern CRT will still burn in.
“BTW
Don’t be offensive to people… “Macs are for Homos” comes across as the words of a 13yr old boy who is unsure about his sexuality…”
I’m gay, and it seemed pretty obvious to me that post was a joke. Nothing offensive about it.
Right. And it doesn’t occur to you that, just possibly, market share and installed base are linked in some small, trivial way? Like when one company has a tiny market share for years and years, and another has a huge market share for years and years, it might be a little bit reasonable to assume one will have rather more of an installed base than the other?
What battle? There is no Mac OS X versus Windows battle they are 2 different OSes that run on different processor types. Most Apple users are happy to get on with their lives using their Macs but it’s all the people with PPC Envy trolling these sites, with the same old tired arguments.
If there is any battle it’s Windows versus Linux on x86, and damn I think we know who’s winning that one. Microsoft with 95% (ish) of the x86 desktop market, which is probably the same percentage of the PPC desktop market that Apple has!
All they want to know is “how many potential customers do I have on this platform?”. That’s the installed base (sans people with hopelessly old hardware where some piece of software wouldn’t run).
Where has this weird definition of market share sprung up from (and when did it happen) ?
Market share is, historically, a percentage measure of what you are referring to as “installed base”. So if the entire market is 1000 machines and Apple has an “installed base” of 50, they have “market share” of 5%.
Unless specifically stated (or used in context) it’s got nothing to do with units shipped.
Market share refers to a brand’s share of the total sales of all products within the product category in which the brand competes. Market share is determined by dividing a brand’s sales volume by the total category sales volume.
Not, “Unless specifically stated (or used in context) it’s got nothing to do with units shipped.”
drsmithy, it’s kind of ironic you lambast someone about a strange definition of marketshare and then offer up an incorrect definition yourself. From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketshare
“It can be expressed as a company’s sales revenue (from that market) divided by the total sales revenue available in that market. It can also be expressed as a company’s unit sales volume (in a market) divided by the total volume of units sold in that market.”
This means that if 1000 computer were sold in a given quarter and Apple sold 50 of them, Apple would have a marketshare of 5%. If the following quarter, 2000 computers were sold total and Apple still sold 50 of them, Apple’s marketshare would then be 2.5%.
The fact that there are 10,000 computers already out there that were sold previously has nothing to do Apple’s current market share.
Seems like someone HAS confused installed base with marketshare (drsmithy, that’s you).
drsmithy, it’s kind of ironic you lambast someone about a strange definition of marketshare and then offer up an incorrect definition yourself. From wikipedia:
Ah well, my bad. I must say that’s never been my interpretation of “market share” (and it doesn’t really strike me as a definition that makes sense, but anyway). It’s always come across to me as stated in the first part of the Wikipedia definition:
“Market share, […] is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company.”
Where “market” = “all” the machines. Seems a bit silly that once a machine is sold it’s no longer part of the “market”.
It may seem silly to you, but it’s true
. Your understanding of ‘market’ is wrong. In this area it refers to active trade, the actual units being sold in the period under analysis. The stuff that’s already there is irrelevant, no-one’s buying or selling it so it’s not part of the ‘market’.
Having worked at NeXT and Apple Enterprise during the merger days, one of our biggest wishes was to have native Oracle support as well as Oracle adopting the technologies.
Nice to see they are and guess what? The Fed market is massive. A good source of information on what is going on within the Federal Markets is Washington Technology Magazine. It’s an excellent resource.
http://www.washingtontechnology.com
With Oracle finally coming through with their promises back in 1997 Apple has a variety of Enterprise Databases supported on OS X. You have Sybase, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and I would expect IBM to port DB/2 natively to OS X as well. It just makes sense for IBM to compete on all platforms with Oracle.
Other extremely noteworthy databases are Openbase, mySQL and for lesser needs Filemaker Pro.
Regarding Openbase: they were written natively for Cocoa. They have over a decade of expertise and are native on OS X and Linux.
http://www.openbase.com
Apple is slowly reinventing itself across all fronts. If the Enterprise department returns in strength I’ll resubmit my resume.
The market focus for NeXT and now Apple continues not to be focused on Italy.
That will change but by sheer volume, Italy, will not bring the greatest ROI in the shortest time frame that markets like the U.S, U.K and soon China.
If you don’t think Apple isn’t negotiating to penetrate into China then you really haven’t worked within the Enterprise Markets, period.
Apple is positioning itself with the Telecommunications markets, specifically Wireless and has been working hard to make headway into the delivery of 3G services these markets are just now preparing to deploy across the U.S.
Analysts have been historically bearish on Apple. Now that they are being bullish it is not because of the iPod and its present market share. It is because analysts receive information from Apple about future product roadmaps, from time-to-time. They aren’t shown the Golden Apple but they are given directions in which Apple targets.
All publically traded corporations do this. It’s a two-way street.
Apple’s recent retail push into the European Markets, along side moving 3 call centers into that area should wake people up that Apple is gearing up to target Europe in a big way. Steve always makes sure he has all his ducks in a row before selling his wares.
A lot of the red-tape deals with European Union regulations. Such negotiations can delay plans by 12-18 months. It happens to all companies across all markets that are foreign and attempting to enter into the EU. The same goes with foreign entities entering into the U.S. Markets.
The analysts are reporting on the latest statuses from Apple and the rest of the industry that knows by direct experience the current state of the industry, at large.
If Apple releases a Power5 derived Server for Xserve that is on a second tier, that will mean that the Federal Markets and large enterprises will have been preparing for this nearly 6 months prior to its public release.
That is how it works. You have to apply for certifications within the Federal area and that includes informing the Feds of all the products you want now certified as well as future roadmaps.
I’ll leave the rest as an exercise for those who are only used to B2C business transactions. B2B and B2E (Business to Enterprise) and B2F(Business to Federal) all have their own paradigms.
One market that is B2E no one is mentioning is the Stock Markets/Commodities Markets/Bond Markets, etc that need solutions. And also there seems to be the lack of information regarding the Banking industry.
These will be the markets Apple targets with a Power5 based architecture.
Luca seem to be very interested in Apple, he know the market share exactly, he looks around to see macs, he’s reading on mac related sites. I think he is a litte mac zealot. Don’t worry luca if you get a real job anytime you can buy one of the good looking computers wich seem to be too expensive for you today.
i live in milan and i have little problems finding any mac or other apple gear here. i think it’s better to ignore trolls and zealots than trying to persuade them of their limited logic
Where “market” = “all” the machines. Seems a bit silly that once a machine is sold it’s no longer part of the “market”.
You can only sell software for running systems 🙂
An dell PC that’s somewhere in stock doesn’t have a user yet that might lets say buy an anti-virus product.Doesn’t count for the installed base targeted by that particular anti-virus vendor(no OS nothing to install), well that is if they don’t bundle that particular product together with a lot other software besides the OS with the dell PC.
How relativ most numbers are and how we twist them,they still are huge when MS is concerned.
Only workers with desire to exploit other workers own Macintosh Apple.
This company exploits hard work of open source code worker to build closed system for bourgeois.
One day revolution will come to Apple Mac and sweep it away to annals of worker exploitation history, where it belongs.
I’ve had this discussion with a mac-head recently, and sent this suggestion to apple. Read carefully, before you get mad and try to explain why Apple does not cater to low-end customers. I don’t want Apple to “lower it’s standard”, I want it to make a box that makes sense.
I use gnu/linux and bsd at home. I have a gaming box using windows, but that’s it. An imac would play nice with all my *nix boxes. I would love to have one. I don’t mind paying a good price for one.
I own a 21″CRT that sits on a KVM and I use with all my machines that need to (many have no key’s and are just handled via ssh).
I hate machines with integrated monitors. I want to be able to pick/upgrade whatever my monitor. If my monitor breaks, I don’t want the machine to be an expensive boat anchor. And people wonder why Mac can’t make inroads as business workstation.
If I want a headless apple, I have to spend $1400+ bucks. I’m not talkign about the icheap $500 headless emac proposed on this site a year ago. I don’t want a G4 when G5’s are out.
But I use a POS Netvista at work that has the monitor tied in. There’s a reason monitors are separate on pc’s now. They learned it’s bad to time them together.
Until a <$1000 headless mac comes out, or my laptop breaks, I will not own and Apple. It’s too bad, because I and many other geeks would like to.
I can understand bogey’s desire to have a sub $1,000 headless Mac. I would probably want one also. However I can understand why one might not be coming out soon. Apple doesn’t build anything until they know that a market exist for it. They learned their lesson with the PowerMac Cube. While a sub $1,000 headless device sounds like a winner on closer examination it may not be.
For many years now most computer companies have been reporting that laptops are the fastest growing segment in their product lines. Apple latest numbers indicate that their market is shifting to Laptops even faster than the industry. It should be no surprice that Apple’s widest range of products is in Laptops.
Now if you take Apple’s projected customers, subtract those that want a laptop, subtract those that want a high end power machine, and subtract those that want a simple on in one, how much is left? Maybe there isn’t enough left to justify a headless low cost machine.
The market area where monitors are kept through 2 or more generations of computer is business. But Apple has no real presence in that market at this time.
If, in the future, Apple sees a need to build a lower cost headless unit, they will do it. However they will not do it until it makes economic sense.
Man, some people just persist in continuing their own ignorance. Let’s look at a more complete and detailed information about marketshare from Quicken.com’s Glossary:
http://www.quicken.com/glossary/notemplates/content/?markshare
“A measure of how dominant a company is in its industry. Market share is determined by expressing a company’s revenues, sometimes for a specific product or service, AS A PERCENTAGE OF THE INDUSTRY’S OVERALL REVENUES for similar products or services.”
Translation: marketshare calculations involve REVENUES, not total historical sales. drsmithy is claiming you need to count all historical sales to determine marketshare, but I’d like to see a quarterly report where a company adds up sales from all previous quarters to describe its revenues.
As I said, some people are so mired in their own ignorance, they refuse to learn even when confronted with plain facts.
Good Post. I appreciate the reason in your post. Most of the time when I describe what I want, I get lectured about Apple’s desire to be the high-end of the market, and how they don’t want to compete with Dell and WalMart. Your point is well taken. And when my laptop is not of this world anymore, I will likely look at a powerbook.
However, I have a couple more reasons apple should consider this:
-your point about no presence for Apple in business. A no-monitor imac could be a fast in-road. Non MS developpers with back end *nix server. Even regular business users, they can still use office. But having to upgrade a monitor every generation is expensive.
-Apple may find that some of the purchasers of this machine would buy some of their more expensive monitors.
-Considering Darwin sitting at it’s core, doesn’t Apple stand to gain a lot by appealing to the geek market? (I’ve talked to many others in the geek market turned off by the integrated monitor thing.)
-Integrating a monitor is defining what the box is used for. Why alienate people who want it for a different use? imac specs are plenty for someone who wants to serve a basic website, but given the imacs design, it’s not a very obvious choice for a budget server.
-I just plain like choice. maybe I want the biggest flat lcd apple sells. Or maybe I want to use a 15″crt from ’92.
-bogey
I don’t really get the people who say Apple is a rival with Microsoft or vise versa. Apple has to small of a base and market share to affect Microsoft. Obviously mac users perfere the quality of Apple software over Microsoft and others, even prefere it over Adobe. I would say Apple is more of a rival now a days to Adobe. Which basically happen because Adobe stopped devoping Premiere and the other video project(which later became Final Cut Pro). Obviously Adobe has since come out with Premiere Pro.
I can understand bogey’s desire to have a sub $1,000 headless Mac. I would probably want one also. However I can understand why one might not be coming out soon. Apple doesn’t build anything until they know that a market exist for it. They learned their lesson with the PowerMac Cube. While a sub $1,000 headless device sounds like a winner on closer examination it may not be.
The market _is_ there. Huge numbers of PCs are sold without monitors.
The Cube failed because it was ludicrously priced (and that’s being generous), not because there wasn’t a market.
Apple had a real chance with the desklamp-iMac to create a modular system with a detachable screen to easily service two aspects of the market with essentially a single piece of hardware. But they didn’t.
The market area where monitors are kept through 2 or more generations of computer is business.
I’d have to disagree. I would imagine far more home users re-use as many components as possible. A large proportion of business customers work on 3 – 4 year leases for the entire machine, so _everything_ gets replaced every 3-4 years.
Typically in business the only people keeping things like screens and keyboards across different machines are that minority whose needs have dictated a significant investment in “non-standard” configurations (eg: my two 17″ LCDs).
Translation: marketshare calculations involve REVENUES, not total historical sales. drsmithy is claiming you need to count all historical sales to determine marketshare, but I’d like to see a quarterly report where a company adds up sales from all previous quarters to describe its revenues.
Actually my misunderstanding had nothing to do with counting sales or revenues (past or present), I was interpreting “market share” as a proportional measure of installed base. I would have thought that was clear from my example.
As I said, some people are so mired in their own ignorance, they refuse to learn even when confronted with plain facts.
Right. Which is why I immediately posted a message admitting my error, I presume ?
To increase market share in a meaningful way, Apple has to fix many perceptions left over from its recent past.
First, most textbooks in CS do not come with software forthe Mac. You will see something for windows, for linux, and for UNIX, but no one is willing to flat out guarante their stuff works on macs.
Most software available, including the vaunted MS Office, is a second generation version. Every major application on the Mac is either a retread of a Windows version, or a boutique version. This does not endear the Mac to business.
Schools have dropped Macs from their labs. Foreigners from India/China/Eastern Europe dont use them, except for people in the creative arts. Prices are simply too high. The trend is towards running generic software on commodity hardware. At the universtiy where I work, the percentage of Mac users among incoming freshmen is between 2 and 3 percent. Among faculty, it is only the old timers, and among staff, it is mostly the secretaries.
Many posts on this net are from persons saying in effect that they love their Macs and that they are profficient in Wintel boxes and then they list how many of the latter they own. That underlines the main problem: why not own all Macs? Because you can’t communicate with the rest of the world from a Mac.
For Apple to get people to really buy its stuff, it must convince the world that it can produce more than the c. 2 million units it sells per year — the world’s demand is perhaps 25 times that amount. It’s just not possible to raise production without outsourcing and allowing clones. The price must be reduced, and there must be less hype in the ads. The argument on ease-of-use is no longer strong. The beauty of the appearance is lessened when you consider that there are 600 engineers in Taiwan working on the innards, and that the outside resembles an elevated laptop with a screen where the
keyboard used to be. If Apple sells itself as “we are the best, and you are stupid not to see it”, then the market will not react positively.
All in all, it’s a pity that such a good computer company is not more popular.