“For now, Apple has a vise-grip on ultraportables like it has on tablets,” Brooke Crothers reports for CNET. “With the company on track to sell well over 10 million Airs this year, it may well see the product ultimately become its bestselling laptop. And the company will only accelerate this trend when it brings out a larger ultraslim model, which, for all intents and purposes, will also be a MacBook Air.”
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“Call it PC versus Mac, the Ultrabook edition,” Crothers reports. “A possible result: Apple is the only device maker selling large numbers of the new breed of powerful, Sandy Bridge-based, sub-3-pound ultraportables, aka Ultrabooks. As is the case with the current tablet market, consumers will look to Apple for ultraslim post-PC designs but continue to choose–in diminishing proportions relative to Apple–HP and Dell for the traditional computing paradigm.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
‘Ultrabook’ makers squeezed by Apple’s control of unibody metal chassis supply – August 4, 2011
Mmm… Bloodbath, gentlemen?
Really? You mean Acer, Dell and others that have been peddling their crapbooks, I mean netbooks, haven’t cornered the market?
Hmmm…..
I know. I can’t believe it that people don’t like using a netbook that chokes on Winblows 7 like a novice porn star in her first video.
Spoken from personal experience, eh Cubey?
Hover cursor over the Cube and you know it!
…while coincidentally a netbook gets the BSOD 😉
(I know which one I prefer to see…)
Apple is great and all,but it’s really gonna suck if they get a monopoly going.
There is nothing inherently wrong with having a monopoly, in fact, that is the goal of most companies. It is only illegal to abuse that monopoly, which I do not see Apple doing
The Wintards won’t like it because Macs run OSX. Yes, you can certainly run Windows on a MacBook Air but the Wintards don’t want to pay MacBook Air money for a notebook if they feel they should be able to get similar quality ultrabook for $700 from Acer, Dell or Lenovo. I’m not saying they will, but they believe they’re being cheated for what they consider merely a thin netbook if they get it from Apple. So, no. Wintards will not like an Apple monopoly.
Already PC vendors think that Apple is abusing its position by buying up most of the case material inventory or tying up usage of CNC milling facilities. Abuse is relative depending upon a viewer’s standpoint. Still, Apple had grabbed most of of the ultrabook inventory capacity before the ultrabook was even in demand by any other computer company.
“tying up usage of CNC milling facilities.” is a bit erroneous.
Give me the order and I’ll lease the building and buy the CNC machines and start production. The milling of the case is probably one of the easier tasks to order up. It is far easier than the production of circuit boards.
As far as I can tell, Apple is not buying any materials or components that it is not using in the production of its products. Apple is also selling as much product as it can make.
Since Apple is not buying materials or components just to stockpile them and inhibit would-be competitors, there is no “monopolistic abuse.” Apple is simply running a highly successful business. Case closed.
A monopoly is antithetical to a free market, so are you saying you are against free markets?
Yeah… That would be pretty horrible…
Hey, if these guys did it, so can Apple…AHHH!!!
http://www.metallica.com/products/monopoly-metallica-edition.asp
First you need to understand what a Monopoly is and the underpinnings that make it such.
Since other manufactures make Pc’s, and a choice is given dosnt make a monopoly.
Just because a company like Apple is making what everyone wants and is the defacto standard set, again dosnt make Apple have a Monopoly, it just shows that they make products that everyone has finally came to see as the elite to others that have been around for years.
Just because you make a better product then everyone else doesnt make a Monopoly.
It’s just smart Business sence from Apple and Steve.
Why can’t I be a genius???
I dunno, a lack of brain cells maybe?
That’s very possible
You can be, if you can deduce the grammatical background to the phrase “….continue to choose–in diminishing proportions relative to Apple–HP and Dell for the traditional computing paradigm.”
I’m still working on it.
use commas in place of hyphens…
“… consumers will look to Apple for ultraslim post-PC designs [,] but continue to choose, in diminishing proportions relative to Apple, HP and Dell for the traditional computing paradigm.”
Translation: MBAs are considered to be “post-PC designs.” Comsumers continue to “look to Apple” – buy MBAs like they are out of style. In addition, consumers are increasingly purchasing Macs rather than HP or Dell products for computers that are more “traditional” – desktops and laptops.
Ah, thank you kingmel.
AND – the often cried, “Competition as always good” is not necessarily so. Some people strive for excellence because that is who they are. They already are excellent, and they strive for even further excellence. They do not need the likes of Monkey Boy or numb-brain Dell competing with them to push them into excellence. The names of a couple of such people are, I believe, Jobs and Ives.
People use the word “monopoly” wrong. The only monopolies that exist in history and today are ones granted by government, and government is the original monopoly. (That’s the definition of government: an entity with a monopoly on the use of force over a geographical area.)
If competition is allowed, there will be no monopolies, because to be a monopoly successfully you’d have to keep prices so low that nobody would want to compete… but since people will want to compete anyway, even when it is uneconomic, you’ll never get a monopoly.
When you see monopoly pricing whether in telephone service, cable service, or retirement rip off plans (e.g.: social security), railway travel, the postal service, etc. it is always government creating the monopoly by criminalizing competition.
Monopolies are illegal or evil in and of themselves. There are lots of them in operation today. A legally operating monopoly (other than government sanctioned ie utilities) occur when the consumer (in mass) selects the monopoly’s product over all others.
Its the conduct of the monopoly, conduct designed to thwart competition that is the problem. Standard Oil was a monopoly that used its ownership of transmission lines to thwart competition. ATT (the former Ma Bell) used its dial tone monopoly revenue to subsidize telecom equipment sales, thereby thwarting competition. IBM denied third party application developers access to its version of UNIX, thwarting competition in applications. MSFT did just about everything imaginable (that was illegal) to thwart OS competition.
As long as Apple does nothing illegal to thwart competition in its area of businesses, it won’t have a problem. Frankly, Apple doesn’t have to do anything illegal, as their products are clearly superior to the competition, and aren’t priced to deny others profit.
For those afraid of an Apple monopoly, Microsoft provides the OS software for about 90% of all computers sold.
For Apple to have a computer monopoly the company would have to provide the OS for about 70% or more of all computers sold.
So don’t worry, it will take Apple 2 or 3 years to reach 70%.
That depends on how you define a computer. An iPhone, an iPad and an iPod Touch are all computers as are any smartphone. What about embedded systems?
Windoze is the most unstable, insecure POS OS I have ever had to deal with and should not be used on any kind of critical system.
… and Google search (dumping free Android into smart phone market)?