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Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD | |
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| Time: 10:13 EST/15:13 GMT | News Source: BetaNews | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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Move over Microsoft. Apple can claim big, big market share numbers, too. According to NPD, in June, nine out of 10 dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more went to Apple. Mac revenue market share in the "premium" price segment was 91 percent, up from 88 percent in May. By the way, Apple's command of the premium market is way up from first quarter 2008, when, according to NPD, Mac revenue share was 66 percent. Gee, and it seemed so high when I broke that story. | ||
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| #1 By 92283 (142.32.208.232) at 7/23/2009 11:00:38 AM |
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"For all Windows PCs, ASP was $515 in June.
For Macs: $1,400." Apple: 2.8x the cost. My last quad core I bought was under 500$ (without monitor). I coulda bought a Mac (ha ha ha) but I bought a 37" LCD TV with the money I saved. This post was edited by NotParkerToo on Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 11:02. |
| #2 By 89249 (64.207.240.90) at 7/23/2009 11:16:20 AM |
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Apple does have the premium market + fad market locked down.
I now know of 4 people who have spent nearly 4k on desktops for their home. These are people who spend nearly all of their computer time surfing the net, checking e-mail, and well... not much else. My observations of non-commercial "Mac" people are: Replace your computer every couple years at the least - many are happy to have their MacBook die so they have an excuse to buy the new one. Overpurchase your computer to brag about your new box - 2 words Cinema Display I'm a libertarian so I really don't care if they do this but it is kinda sad after a while. But hey at least they aren't paying M$ right? And I'm not quite sure why the article's author is directing this at Microsoft. MS gets nearly a fixed amount per unit (which is why Microsoft talks about market share as a per unit shipped). They should be comparing this to Dell/HP etc. But even there the numbers aren't nearly as enlightening since Dell and HP make a large portion of their money off of support contracts/work which again go up more on a per unit basis and not sale amount. If anything Apple is beating up on the OEM & Hardware Vendors more than anything at this point imo. |
| #3 By 2960 (72.196.201.130) at 7/23/2009 2:45:26 PM |
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It's the Mac Experience. Some people are willing to pay for it. It's a consumer's choice.
Different strokes for different folks. |
| #4 By 2960 (72.196.201.130) at 7/23/2009 2:46:43 PM |
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BTW... I understand the other side too. Not everyone wants to spend that kind of money, and are happy with your average PC. That's ok too.
I could have bought a BMW X5, or my Ford Edge. I bought the Edge. It was half the price, 90% as good, and I'm quite happy with it. |
| #5 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/23/2009 3:02:54 PM |
| I must admit that I don't understand the mindset of people who didn't buy an Apple, aren't forced to use an Apple, don't interact with Apple in any way, shape or form but they bitch endlessly about the price of these machines that they didn't have to buy or use. Perhaps it's an obsessive-compulsive fixation. I have a mental image of Rainman saying "Apple is expensive. Apple is expensive. Apple is expensive." over and over again. |
| #6 By 228224 (74.59.86.16) at 7/23/2009 4:27:53 PM |
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Personally you probably get what you pay for - but can you really with a Mac? As NotPartkerToo gave an example of over-priced. He could of bought 2 quad systems with screens for the samer price as 1 Mac.
Part of it is fad. The other part is people buying what they know nothing about. Someone I know bought an AirPort router. It can only be set up if you attach a Mac to it [luckily they have one]. For the price of the AirPort, could of bought 2-3 Linksys or Dlink routers. I don't think you can do any configuration unless you have a Mac. Told a friend who has 4 Macs [various models over the years at home] that I won't touch a Mac but I'd touch the OS *only* if it was released on the Intel side and not restricted to Mac hardware. |
| #7 By 92283 (70.67.3.196) at 7/23/2009 4:55:40 PM |
| I must admit that I don't understand the mindset of people who didn't buy a legal copy of Windows, aren't forced to use Windows, don't interact with Microsoft in any way, shape or form but they come to ActiveWin and bitch endlessly ... |
| #8 By 218115 (65.90.202.10) at 7/23/2009 5:28:55 PM |
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M$ sucks. M$ sucks. M$ sucks.
Theres 342 boxes of Vista left on that retail shelf. Charlie Babbitt got a blue screen. |
| #9 By 143 (216.205.223.146) at 7/23/2009 7:05:57 PM |
| MAC daddy. |
| #10 By 15406 (99.240.76.72) at 7/23/2009 7:33:51 PM |
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#7: My Acer Quad that I'm typing this on came with Vista Home Premium, my workplace specifies Windows XP and I interact with MS software every day as part of my job. So, in your single sentence you're wrong three times. Impressive, but not as much considering you're the man who can't have a thought without having to go back and edit it afterward.
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| #11 By 12071 (203.185.215.144) at 7/23/2009 8:00:26 PM |
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#9 Will make you jump, jump!
Quad code for under $500... you must love nasty pre-built pc's... most likely from Dell knowing you! I just built my new pc (i7 920) and whilst I didn't spend as much as I would have on a MAC, it wasn't that cheap either - you get what you pay for and good (let alone decent) components cost money. As TechLarry said, it's about the experience - whether you buy a MAC or not. I like to pick out every part that goes into my pc so a MAC isn't really an option. |
| #12 By 13997 (68.118.60.33) at 7/23/2009 9:58:28 PM |
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#11
In terms of price, paying for what you get doesn't add up in the PC industry either, as there are just as many uninformed people that 'claim' to be the defacto expert on brands and components. And this is one area where I also have my biggest complaint with Apple. As a former engineer for an OEM, there is a lot about both the home builders and even OEM market doesn't understand, nor do many of the current OEMs care about. When building a system paying an extra $100 for a Dynapower PS over a Corsair or even generic brand doesn't always mean quality, nor does it mean your system is going to run better, and there are times it will make your system less reliable. This is where the PC people argue among themselves as they all have 'pet' and favorite brands when building systems. However, cost is a deciding factor a lot of times when it has nothing to do with the quality of the component. Current OEMs tend to go for two factors cost and marginal reliability in that order. Buying a 'brand' name is a crap shoot even if you pay top dollar for a Sony or buy a Mac from Apple. Even in a VERY CLOSED hardware lineup like Apple offers, the differences between two different units with the same model number can be disturbing. (Reference: LCD screens, HDs, Chipsets, Memory, and even GPUs.) Having a Mac with Model # xxxx doesn't mean much, as you will find a lot of variation in the components and not just in normal product cycle revisions. This can mean you got lucky and have a Mac with the good HD model or you got screwed and your HD is loud and going to die. (You can find this in the consumer electronics market as well, as this tends to be the Apple OEM mindset.) --- In the 'real' world - component pairing is the KEY to a good system. It doesn't mean spending the extra $100 on a Dynapower PS Unit. In our labs you would be amazed at how simple and seemingly 'innocent' components can affect and pair differently. For example take Brand X HD and pair it with Brand X HD Controller and you will get horrid performance, with NO TECHNICAL REASONING based on specifications, yet if you take Brand Y HD and pair it with the same HD controller you will get amazing performance, and if you pair Brand X HD with Controller Y you will get amazing performance. This is where OEMs and enthusists fail, as OEMs don't care about a 20% performance loss because they are saving on HD X and Controller X. Enthusists have to go on 'hear-say' and also don't have the testing lab or money to buy 5 brands of everything and configure the optimal pairing of components. So when the day is over, it isn't about price, but what you are building and how the parts interact. Some OEMs use to be about this, but outgrew these fundamentals and started down the road of just shoving the best 'reported' components in a system, and not realizing that there are many pairing conflicts that make it slower than a generic brand X OEM. If you have the chance, don't live off the forums and sites that say XXX rules and don't buy YYY... Instead take the best advice you can find and the best specifications, and if you have th resources try to buy a few components to test together, and don't discount the 'cheaper' stuff, as sometimes it will work better. |
| #13 By 12071 (203.185.215.144) at 7/23/2009 11:38:02 PM |
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#12 There is absolutely a point of diminishing returns when it comes to buying hardware - but in general, for the things that matter I still stand by the comment that you get what you pay for. Even something as "basic" as a computer case which can set you back anything from $10-$300 or potentially even more depending on what you want. Sure you don't need the $300 version and I would say that the point of diminishing returns is far below that but I refuse to buy a cheap case - sure it'll do the job... it'll just be a pain in the backside as it'll bound to be small inside meaning that sorting out all the cables, cards etc is a pain every time you open it up.
Sure you can buy a cheap PSU - as long as you dont mind that the 5V line isn't going to ever be 5V, the 12V will be 11.5V at best etc. You can live with all these things unless you want a truly stable system. Or you want to overclock. Or you want to install faster RAM that does require you to up the voltage a tad to ensure stable running of the system. The cheap PSU will also not be modular meaning you've got a whole mess inside your case of useless cables that don't need to be there. Those things aren't important to everyone... which is why they buy the crap that Dell put out. And the same goes (in various importance) to the Motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD's etc. Obviously purchasing the i7 940 is a waste of money given it's double the price of the 920 (especially when you can O/C the 920 to well beyond those speeds safely) and purchasing the 2TB HDD is a waste of money compared to purchasing 2x1TB HDD's etc. As they say "horses for courses" - everyone is different, we all have different needs, doesn't mean that someone is wrong or right for purchasing a MAC no matter how much the religious MS supporters here claim otherwise (you'd swear that Apple came to their houses and beat them when they were children!). Even the crap that Dell put out if good for some people :) hehehe |
| #14 By 23275 (24.196.4.141) at 7/23/2009 11:39:53 PM |
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#12, Super post.
I share a lot about how much we have to test to come up with one solid baseline. Once we have the mix just right - performance, reliability, price, sources, shipping, etc... we have to build and certify the image. It is very hard, takes a lot of testing, objectivity and buckets of money. You cannot assume a thing, either and instead rely on the data. One cycle your fav HD will work like a champ and one rev later, it is tanking and you're driving all over hell replacing HDD's. One cycle Seagate 7200 11r will be on its butt and the next WD Caviar Blacks will be in - a cycle later the reverse will be true and only testing, testing and more testing will prevent failures and control costs. I also totally get what Apple does - they deliver a better and more consistent experience. We do the same, but on the PC side and then go much further - delivering turn-key and veyr highly personalized systems that are better supported than even Apple can, or does. Point is, among the larger volume sellers, Apple does it better than the PC OEM's period, end of story. It costs more, but the experience is better and more consistent at that end of the market. I'd like to think we could scale up that well, but the fact is we can't - or we would have by now. Still, it is really fun to deliver much higher quality systems, despite being relatively tiny - even when compared to a small OEM. Knock em if you want, but the numbers do not lie. The OEM's and all PC builders need to listen to what Avenger said and build to a more stable baseline that most probably features fewer models that can be better supported - or Apple will continue to eat up the higher margin systems market. As I said in 2007 about "The day the PC died" - it went down the second MS dumped on gamers and the very end of the platform that was worthy of admiration. |
| #15 By 13997 (68.118.60.33) at 7/24/2009 3:18:39 AM |
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#13 "Sure you can buy a cheap PSU - as long as you dont mind that the 5V line isn't going to ever be 5V, the 12V"
The point is that a 'more expense' power supply is not going to always be the best. You assume that by going with a better brand or more money you are going to get more consistent voltage, which is bad reasoning and often very false. There is a difference in picking technologies and their purpose and reasons why you would spend more for a 'better technology' not a better brand. For example you might want to spend the extra few bucks for extra AMPs and a single 12v rail, but that doesn't dictate a brand to give you that technology. The Brand and the Cost are not what is making the unit better instead, the technology used is what is making it better and better for overclocking. Over the years I have seen great brands produce crap at high prices and low no name brand produce really consistent and high quality components, and yet watch people run to pick the name brand crap, especially if it costs more. It is like the old jewerly store psychology story, when products aren't selling, raise the prices so people think they are even more 'special'... And sadly this type of marketing also works in the technology world. Apple being a good example of doing this. In the PC world Alienware is another 'brand' name that is good at doing this. There is a reason why you see so many 'tech' sites with so many different performance numbers from reasonably the same hardware in terms of specifications. Heck go look up CPU benchmarks from your favorite site, and compare them to another site and you will find an uber fast CPU on one site register as mediocre at best on the other site. The techs doing the tests are pairing the CPUs with bad mainboard or RAM combinations and expecting 'magical' consistency that is misleading at best. Their magic is based on the 'specifications' being consistent, even though there are often lower level factors at play that they don't advertise and even uber geeks don't understand, let alone average consumers or even power users. Heck even the differences in how an LCD displays an image and approximates or displays colors is based on the panel capability and the controller specifications, and these are hard to find data about, and even in a single brand you will find variances that are alarming. The Apple example here is the easiest, because they were only using an 18bit display and a POOR LCD controller that had horrid approximation it was very easy for users to see they were not getting a full 16million color display. If the controller on the LCD itself was properly paired, the 18bit LCDs used would have been able to display more than the 260K colors, as it isn't the LCD panel itself that was total crap, but the sub-controller for creating the colors per pixel that was crap. And you can do this with almost every component in the computer. Heck even a PC5300 RAM chip with the same timings as another brand won't even fire in brand X mainboard because of a sub level specification that is not 'public'... And here the 'PRICE' or 'BRAND' is not going to save you, having the RIGHT ONE is... |
| #16 By 13997 (68.118.60.33) at 7/24/2009 3:36:53 AM |
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#14 "I also totally get what Apple does - they deliver a better and more consistent experience"
The key here is that they 'use' to... Even Apple themselves over the past few years alone have hit some really hard problems because of their product line inconsistency. Take their GPU offering alone, this has created a major bottleneck and concessions in the development of OS X. OS X developers have wanted to go to a true 3D accelerated UI experience and even tried many frameworks or expanding existing frameworks only to find that the inconsistencies in the GPUs of the 'current' generation of Macs made this a nightmare. In 10.4 they wanted to pump a lot of the display postscript/pdf though the GPU, but this broken too many applications on certain GPU choices in the Apple hardware line up. (This is where the OS X handing of video and drivers shows the flaws of Darwin and the OS X engineering team as well.) So instead, Apple decided to focus on what was consistent, and that was the Intel SSE features, so this is what OS X uses for many of its 'animations' and GUI based 'tricks'. To this day, OS X uses very little GPU operations for the UI and native drawing calls, in fact virtualy none besides using the GPU as a 3D bitmap composer that just paints window images on surfaces and renders them to the display. (And it does this with inherent latency with its double buffer form of rendering the image. In contrast Vista and Win7's composer doesn't have this latency as it uses old PCI and AGP techniques to draw directly to the display, which is one reason running a game inside a Window on Vista or Win7 will 'always' be a hair faster than OS X.) There was a time when you bought a Mac, you got a Mac with a certain level of consistency and quality. Those days were thrown out when OS X was being baked in the late 90s. Right now a Mac is nothing in terms of any technology consistent feature. You have Intel GPUs, ATI GPUs, NVidia GPUs, and even the Intel CPUs used in the Macs start with the Core Solo and moves up to the Duo and then up to the Xeon processors that all have very different feature sets from being only 32bit on the Core Solo and various levels of hardware virtualization and 64bit support scattered across all makes and models of the Mac line now. This is not consistency, only the illusion of consistency to consumers and why it is a bit dishonest of Apple. Apple is a good marketing company, not the best technology company. If you want technology, you really have to look at things that make people gasp, like Microsoft, as Vista and Win7 have technologies in them that are a generation beyond Linux and OS X, which is very very sad, as there is no reason the OSS world at the very least couldn't be in line. Instead they stand around clueless and poo-poo Microsoft and Windows, all while Microsoft is running a circle around them in terms of hard line technology. (Test this, buy a hybrid GPU, Vista and Win7 are the ONLY OSes that can flip between the GPUs on the fly, powering down one and up the other without the user even blinking... On OS X you have to log off to reboot the GUI, and Linux (XWindows based OSes) also have to reboot XWindows for the driver and GPU changes to happen. And sadly there are some smart and hard line technologies in NT and the WDDM of Vista and Win7 that make this possible and EASY for the OS to do on the fly.) |
| #17 By 3 (213.106.112.96) at 7/24/2009 9:35:48 AM |
| #6 - just wanted to point out that the Apple router experience your friend hadn't hasn't been true for at least the past 4 years worth of Apple Routers as they all ship with the Windows software on the CD as well to set it up. I even setup Time Capsule on my parents PC last year. |
| #18 By 92283 (70.67.3.196) at 7/24/2009 10:26:37 AM |
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#10 Latch must of met Linus Torvalds one day ...
"I'm a big believer in "technology over politics". I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing etc issues. I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out. There are 'extremists' in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do 'free software' any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred." http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_Is_a_Disease_ |
| #19 By 92283 (70.67.3.196) at 7/24/2009 10:32:37 AM |
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#11 "Quad core for under $500... you must love nasty pre-built pc's... most likely from Dell knowing you!"
Nasty? I used to have custom built. But the last two were Dells. Mine are still running. My wife has the previous dual core Dell. I have the quad. Never any problems. I added a little ram since the purchase. Next year I'll buy an i5 or i7 when they hit the 500$ price point. My wife will get the qaud. A sister or my Mom will get the dual-core (if I don't snaffle it and run WHS on it). |
| #20 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at 7/24/2009 10:34:23 AM |
| I wonder why I still do not see any article related to MS financial results on this site. A 10% dive make the stock appealing; I am buying right now..... |
| #21 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/24/2009 10:43:18 AM |
| #18: I'll have to remember that if I come across anyone who hates Microsoft. By the way, how's your AGDS (Apple/Google Derangement Syndrome) doing these days? |
| #22 By 92283 (142.32.208.232) at 7/24/2009 11:33:34 AM |
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" I'll have to remember that if I come across anyone who hates Microsoft.:
Try the mirror. "By the way, how's your AGDS (Apple/Google Derangement Syndrome) doing these days?" If I hung out on Apple or Google websites all day long and spent my time trashing them I might be worried. The ooccasional snotty comment on a Windows forum seems quite sane compared to your Microsoft Hatred. |
| #23 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/24/2009 11:46:24 AM |
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#22: Try the mirror.
I don't hate Microsoft, and your own (il)logic proves it. You've said many times that there is no such thing as the MS lock-in. If I hated Microsoft, would I willingly use their software? The ooccasional snotty comment on a Windows forum seems quite sane compared to your Microsoft Hatred. Yes, with the occasion being the posting of any Apple or Google-related story. |
| #24 By 92283 (142.32.208.232) at 7/24/2009 12:38:12 PM |
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"I don't hate Microsoft"
Liar. "If I hated Microsoft, would I willingly use their software?" I don't believe anything you say on this forum ... except your hatred for Microsoft. Microsoft hatred is a disease and you have it. |
| #25 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 7/24/2009 2:04:12 PM |
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#25: I don't believe anything you say on this forum
I am lying. |
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