Apple Cannot Handle More Than 5-Percent

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I have to say this is one of the best articles I've read on Apple's business situation. That said, I think there is an additional bit of past botched opertunities that resemble whats going on today:
--Vista--
This was Microsofts weak point. It was also the point at which Apple should have entered back into the general PC hardware market as they did previously, only to get crapped on by jobs. They insisted the Mac is superior because it has a silver cover and an apple logo on it, when in reality they are just plain intel hardware with a custom EFI firmware on it. And as most people know, OS X runs pretty well even with the hack jobs random people make for it. So with the developer backing it, OS X could have taken Microsoft head on during the Vista fiasco, but they remained the same old arrogant company, and did nothing more than hire some dude to wear what could be considered by some to be "cool" clothes, act smooth and personify the Mac as something better than some one else (PC guy)
Microsoft was allowed to more or less rebound completely unfettered, and the window of opertunity has been passed.
The same thing will happen again, but this time with the gadgets they rely on so heavily. Jobs is to blame for this, as he is the source of the arrogance I believe.
As to the iPhone, its only a matter of time before that blows up in their face. Android platforms are available on every carrier, whereas iPhone is on only a few, and only ONE in the US. So its no surprise they'll eventually loose the war with Android at some point. And the iPod battle is one of simple math: After the buzz wears off, its about playing music, and that can be accomplished for FAR less than what an iPod sells for.
Apple wants to be the one stop shop, and rule its entire kingdom with no one else helping them... The only problem is, if your King of nothing, whats the point?
 
So many of the comments in the article are ridiculous, I am both a PC user and a Mac user
1) do you know what gross margin is? That is how much money a company makes after its expenses of making its product. What is the gross margin of Apple , Google and Microsoft? In other words who is the greediest?
Apple=43%
Google=69%
Microsoft=84.4%
Sony 42%
In other words apples margins are near the lowest! Why? R&D and quality components.
2) It is Apple who started this revolution with smart phones 3 years ago. Google's Android system
has caught up and is as good and in some ways possibly better than Apple' system. NO question. However,
This is a catch up game! Now every one is going to copy the iPAD/ I work at a top 100 fortune company
and the iPAD is everywhere in our company. This is a company that has no previous Apple computers
and encourages us to use RIM. Soon every employee in our company will have an iPAD very scary since it has only been out a few months. Do you really think thats all Apple has up its sleeve?
3) If apple was really just interested in the $$ they would put their operating system everywhere like Microsoft and Google hence the higher gross margin of those companies. It decreases Apple's margins by having a closed system on expensive machines.
4) Give credit where credit is do!! Apple's design has inspired WINDOWS 7 I run both and it basically looks like a clone of osX which has been around for 5 years. Apple has 75% of the market share for mp3-4 players worldwide. Why? They produced the first high quality player more important they designed itunes a central place to acquire media made it easy and legal. Apple pioneered the app store which is one of the reasons the iPhone took off a brilliant idea. How much does Apple make from the APP store? Its available public info which can be found in their earnings release. ANS: Almost nothing!!! The Majority of money is paid to the app developers. The second largest amount of money pays for the servers and security. Apple has openly stated the purpose of the APP store is to drive sales of their hardware look up the numbers for your self!!!
5)Reliability of products google search the facts!!! consumer surveys always rank Apple way ahead of any other PC makers. This is actually a problem for Apple since studies have shown the typical Apple computer is in service for a significantly longer time than PC reducing upgrade profits for the company.
Why do I have to restart my PC every day or it slows down? Why has my macbook pro been on for over two months straight has no slow down and not a single crash? Easy UNIX vs DOS memory management!
Finally I am not an Apple fan boy I Love my maxed out HP particularly for gaming and my work application.
For my music creation and editing movies with Final cut pro the mac blows away the PC. All it comes down to in the end is computers are tools and if one tool out performs another for a particular task I will choose that tool. If you think either Google, Apple or Microsoft is the end all tool you will never achieve greatness.
Also if you don't think Apple is one of the greatest innovating companies in the world listen to the Eric Schmidt
interview CEO of google posted on YOUTUBE today he basically praises Apple iPhone for creating the market!
 
rotflmao at the market share comments.... Apple like any other company if they could capture 100% of a market they would no ifs ands or buts about it.

Companies are all about profits and making money nothing more nothing less.

If Apple of Microsoft or IBM or Toys R Us could figure a legal way to sell your organs on eBay to make a buck.... guess what, your ass would be for sale by the pound.
 
For the life of me I do not understand all the Apple haters on this forum. If you don't like what they sale then just don't buy it, but don't complain about all the folks who are satisfied with their products being zombies for Apple. Apple puts out the "Ipad" now everybody is putting one out, I guess Apple must have been "stupid" to put out such a product. Apple put out the Iphone now everybody has a "similar" phone on the market. Apple is the only company that sells Iphones and many companies sell Android phones, of course it will out sell the Iphone. I don't own a single Apple product and have no real interest to own one. But I am not judging all the folks who purchase their products either. If anything seems like a lot of Google "zombies" are around. Pretty soon Google will have their hands in more places than the government. And look how they have screwed us over.
 
Funny how US view of the world. Does the World == US in US's Dictionary?
Microsoft never ruled the world. In OS any other sector. Apple Never died. Linux is Doing well in server Space. Unix / BSD survived. And as large as M$ is fighting for Mobile OS Market Shares.
Google didn't rule the search engine world either. It may have a huge market share of 80+% in US. But that is simply because it is the best at searching ENGLISH information. In China, Japen or Korea, Google doesn't even command 30% of market shares.

World Domination is certainly not part of Apple's DNA. And In terms of business Model, Ferrari still makes enough money when they make cars then has little market shares. You could buy Japanese Cars that are much cheaper and as fast as Ferrari. But that is not the point.
Apple continue to see growth in their Mac despite analysis predict decline or stalled sales. By looking at Historical Data, Mac are at their slowest updating time in history. In the world of technology, Apple 's Mac are costly, and slower. Yet the result shoot pass analysis prediction as sales were increasing year over year.

I am typing this on my 5 years Laptop, First Gen Pentium M 1.8Ghz, 1GB DDR, Slow HDD. But it serves me well for 90% of the time. Word Processing, Simple Graphics Editing, Web Serving, Online Communication, Playing Video etc. PC speed are no longer important. People are buying Mac because of other reasons.
And Apple are making double the profits margin then all their competitors. Apple holds 80% of market shares in $1000+ PC sold in US, Things below $1000 are all fairly low margin. And Apple is making Double the Profits @ 80+% of High Margin Sales.
Who said Market Shares Matters?

Android is an OS. And they have many players using it. Much like what is happening to PC and Windows. Who has the high margin sales?
 
first, iphone is still more popular than android. BY THREE TIMES!!!!! currents sales figures do not dictate popularity. the amount of devices IN USE does this. and these numbers don't even include other iOS devices like the ipad and ipod touch. also, android (20+ phones, 4 carriers) only beat iphone (1 phone, 1 carrier) by 4 percent on quarter sales. wow that's impressive, for iphone. you're also forgetting that iphone sales got sluggish in the quarter in anticipation of the leaked iphone 4. these numbers don't even INCLUDE iphone 4 sales. i think Q3 will tell a quite different story. also, compare satisfaction %'s and you'll see that most of those 27% of new android users will end up on iOS.... and stay there. this article is one-sided phandroid drivel.
Oh, and Apples market-cap surpassed Microsoft's like a month or so ago (DETHRONED!!!) this is old news.
 
The article basically states nothing new as most of this is already known to any wise person.This article states that Apple's mobile OS market share is decreasing and therefore I think that Apple(due to rise of Android) will share the same fate as Palm in this department, the fate which Microsoft is sharing(though Windows Phone 7 may change that).The more important fact is that the market share of Mac OS X is also decreasing,not due to the popularity of Microsoft's Windows 7, but due to the rise of open-source platforms like Linux(which has increased in market share after the release of Ubuntu).So, this trend reflects a shift in preference of users and developers alike from the limited scope in Apple OSes to the more open-source environments.
 
[citation][nom]KevinTMC[/nom]Barely well enough to be understood, I'm afraid. High school was a long time ago and I haven't kept up with it.You're right...the prose quality is admirable if it's coming from a non-native speaker. (I did notice the byline, but did not recognize the name; and I've had born-and-bred American friends with equally Teutonic names.) So if that's the case, I apologize for the tone of my post above.I still would have said something though, even if I knew more about the writer. My mother and fiancee are both English teachers. So I really have no choice in the matter. 🙂[/citation]
Remember the name from way back in Tom's history...late '90's or so...I think he was the founder of Toms Hardware guide..if I remember correctly, he was a doctor or something that got caught up in computers and overclocking. But both parents being English teachers...ugh.
 
[citation][nom]thirdshop[/nom]Remember the name from way back in Tom's history...late '90's or so...I think he was the founder of Toms Hardware guide..if I remember correctly, he was a doctor or something that got caught up in computers and overclocking. But both parents being English teachers...ugh.[/citation]
Whoops, my bad...wrong guy...lol
 
The iOS is on one phone through one carrier.....of course the Android is rapidly growing. Google should thank Microsoft. If it wasn't for their crappy OS the Android explosion would have never happened.

You're sharp like a marble
 
All of this is true, but I'm not sure that Apple cares. They can have 5% all day long. As long as they stay the "luxury" brand, they can keep charging ridiculous prices rackin up massive margins. Look at their stocks and total worth. They are the biggest fish in the game and their shareholders could give a rats if they take over the world or not. Maybe Apple's goal is to stay at 5%. It seems to be working out well for them, money wise.
 
[citation][nom]rotsae[/nom]So much grammar mistake and repetitive in this article.[/citation]
Sarcasm right? Otherwise hilariously ironic. Funny either way.

As far as the article goes there are some fairly concrete predictions, that only time will tell for accuracy. Sure Apple has a higher market share that Android phones but the rate of uptake for each is massively weighted in favour of Android - it's like being in a car a mile ahead of the nearest rival and going 60mph, sure you are in the lead and can't even see the guy behind - but he is driving at 100mph and very soon there will be blur, a roar of the engines and Apple will be eating Androids dust. The estimate, according to the analysis, will be 2012.

If Apple doesn't take this threat seriously it could be catastrophic. Apple has banked heavily on the iPhone and if it craps out on this one it could be game over. The article writer isn't gloating and neither am I.

This is a warning - improve or die.
 
Take away the exclusivity contract with ATT and the iphone would have grown by leaps and bounds. I'd have gotten one over Android. But on Verizon I didn't have a choice. Now that I have Android I don't think I want an iphone anymore.
Bad move Apple. You could have been 80% marketshare.
 
Apple seems to lead, with such innovations as graphical user interfaces, online music purchase to stuff portable devices, and cool phones that have beautiful screens and do cool stuff. Then other companies follow, and drive Apple nearly out of markets that it created.
I've never been an Apple basher, and I wrote the above as a positive comment, but they must be doing something wrong if they can create markets, then be relegated to also-ran status in those markets.
 
[citation][nom]bill27[/nom]2) It is Apple who started this revolution with smart phones 3 years ago.[/citation] The revolution of smart phones had already started long before Apple launched the iphone.

[citation][nom]bill27[/nom]4) Give credit where credit is do!! Apple's design has inspired WINDOWS 7 I run both and it basically looks like a clone of osX which has been around for 5 years.[/citation] I still don’t get why apple fans thinks the Windows 7 is a Mac OS X look alike? Some say it’s because of the new taskbar. The only thing Microsoft did whas to remove the text from the application slot leaving just one big icon. When multiple instances of the same application are open it only shows one icon, something that was also possible with windows XP and vista. Another think Microsoft did was to merge the quick launch bar and the taskbar. If you think that the Dock is something revolutionary, go and take a look at Sun’s Looking Glass and you’re in for a surprise. Apple blatantly copied the Dock from Sun.

[citation][nom]bill27[/nom]5)Reliability of products google search the facts!!! consumer surveys always rank Apple way ahead of any other PC makers. This is actually a problem for Apple since studies have shown the typical Apple computer is in service for a significantly longer time than PC reducing upgrade profits for the company.Why do I have to restart my PC every day or it slows down? Why has my macbook pro been on for over two months straight has no slow down and not a single crash? Easy UNIX vs DOS memory management![/citation] In terms of reliability ASUS is at the top here in Europe and Apple holds third (or is it fourth?) place. I work in IT and have tons of clients that use windows, especially Windows XP, and I don’t see them restarting their computers for it to be faster. My home computer is always on since September 2009 with Windows 7 without crashes or slowdowns, I only restart the computer from time to time because of the updates.

[citation][nom]bill27[/nom]For my music creation and editing movies with Final cut pro the mac blows away the PC.[/citation] So the PC doesn’t have music and video editing tools?
 
[citation][nom]WyomingKnott[/nom]Apple seems to lead, with such innovations as graphical user interfaces, online music purchase to stuff portable devices[/citation] Since when did apple created the graphical user interface or online music purchase?
 
[citation][nom]WyomingKnott[/nom]Apple seems to lead, with such innovations as graphical user interfaces, online music purchase to stuff portable devices, and cool phones that have beautiful screens and do cool stuff. Then other companies follow, and drive Apple nearly out of markets that it created.I've never been an Apple basher, and I wrote the above as a positive comment, but they must be doing something wrong if they can create markets, then be relegated to also-ran status in those markets.[/citation]
Dude, they didn't innovate any of those things.
Not one.
Earth = >>>>>>>>>>>>> this way >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
 

Being proprietary hasn't stopped Windows.
 
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