To explain why Apple won’t be cracking the enterprise market anytime soon, Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld, “It doesn’t matter what Apple does to the product. Until the company can address the need for a multi-year roadmap that businesses can refer to, get a stable platform that will be deployable over a long period of time, and designate multiple hardware vendors clients can bid against one another to ensure the lowest price (as well as to avoid getting nailed by internal audit), enterprises simply won’t buy Apple broadly.”
Our Take: Enderle’s right: Apple probably won’t be offering multi-year roadmaps and offering Macs through multiple vendors. That’s simply not how Apple does business. Apple seems to understand that this is what enterprise customers would want and is clearly unwilling to take such steps to woo that business. Apple’s focus lies elsewhere. If enterprise clients have people on staff that can see what they can do with Apple’s Mac OS X Server, XServe G5, Xserve RAID, XSan, and other such products, more power to them; otherwise, it’s off to Dell.com for them. Apple isn’t shooting for the enterprise market, so you can’t criticize them for not offering what enterprise clients want. It’s like criticizing Lexus for not selling dump trucks:
“It doesn’t matter what Lexus does to the product. Until the company can address the need for a multi-ton dump truck that businesses can drive, get a stable drivetrain that will be deployable over a long period of time, and designate multiple heavy equipiment vendors [that] clients can bid against one another to ensure the lowest price (as well as to avoid getting nailed by internal audit), earthmoving enterprises simply won’t buy Lexus broadly.” See how smart we are? Hey, look at us, we’re “Automotive Pundits” now!
Enderle then goes on to explain a comment from a previous article, “One other thing: Several folks questioned my comment that Apple demand was dropping like a rock and referred to past sales performance to refute this. Demand is measured by surveys of buying intent and I rely on surveys done for the financial firms who follow Apple. Unfortunately I don’t have the rights to share the results. But the financial reports you have seen are based on sales before Apple announced the Intel move — and the impact of that development won’t show up in the financial reports until after this quarter ends. If the studies are to be believed, the fourth quarter, in particular, should be ugly for Apple. Granted, forward-looking studies are often unreliable, but the study I’m now using did accurately predict that last quarter would be very strong.”
Full article here.
It sounds like Enderle is referring not to Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter (Q4 05) which ends on September 25, 2005, but the fourth quarter of 2005 (Oct. 1 – Dec. 31, 2005). We’ll be very interested to see if Apple’s Mac demand “drops like a rock” during 2005’s holiday shopping season. If it does, we’ll gladly credit Enderle for breaking the news.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Enderle: ‘Surveys indicate demand for Apple’s products is dropping like a rock’ due to Intel switch – August 01, 2005
Blah, F#cking Blah, Blah, Blah….
I hate that schmuck…
My predictions:
Q4: Apple announces Dual Core Power Macs at Apple expo Paris – causing sales of Macs to showw positive growth over Q3.
Q1: Apple updates eMac and iMac (in October) – gives holiday shoppers a refreshed batch of consumer systems to drool over and buy. Higher sales than Q4.
Status of PowerBook: limbo (meaning unknown if Apple will update PowerBooks before Jan (my expectations for Intel-PowerBooks) – this will have an unknown effect of unit sales for Apple; iBook will compensate for some sales.
Net effect: Overall unit sales up in both quarters; PowerBooks sales down (though we don’t know how much). Oh, and Enderle will be wrong – big surprise there.
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MDN –
Hilarious take. I’m selling my stock in Lexus.
does anyone track his predictions with any accuracy? is he batting 70%? 50%? 5%? if his prognostications can clearly be shown to be way off the mark, then he can be exposed as a fraud, or conversely recognized as a pundit. just because he says things people don’t like to hear doesn’t necessarily make him wrong. only his percentage of correct analysis will define him. and if he’s soooo wrong, we can all chip in a buy him a crystal ball and a 900 number.
MDN please stop reporting what this guy says. He’s an idiot and he probably gets more page hits from the stories you post here.
It just proves that any idiot with two fingers and a keyboard can be a so-called ‘expert’.
BTW, if anyone wants to see how doomed Apple is, go to a retail store. After it takes 15 minutes to pay for something because they are so frickin busy, then come back and report the bad news.
This guy is simply a Mac hater and probably gets a piece of Microsofts profits. He makes no sense at all and knows nothing about what Apple does. And it looks like he will never get a clue in my opinion.
Rob Enderle of “The Enderle Group.” Same as Fred of “Fred’s Bank.”
Hello, I’m Rog of “The Rog Group,” pleased to meet ya. Wanna buy an uninformed quote to back up whatever stupid premise and ideology you’re pushing in your latest crappy article? I’m your man!
You don’t need a “survey of buying intent” to know that sales of the models of Apple computers expected to first make the jump to Intel processors will drop significantly just before the new models are introduced. It’s simple common sense.
What really worried analysts was if there would be an immediate drop in sales; which didn’t happen. Everyone (except for trolls with agendas) heaved a sigh of relief and knew that the transition was going to be relatively smooth.
Enderle was caught in a lie; and is trying his best to cover up his mess.
We can all expect the coming months, which are sure to be turbulent, to be filled with Enderle’s attempts to get hits by saying all sorts of nonsense. Be prepared to have every negative amplified beyond reason and all positives ignored.
His article is loaded with very few relevant facts and an awful lot of apparent wishful thinking on his part. As MDN says, we shall wait and see, but if Enderle is wrong (as he usually is), I highly doubt we’ll see any kind of acknowledgement of that fact coming from him…
I hereby resolve to only refer to Enderle as the Fudmeister from now on.
Please don’t give any traffic to the Fudmeister’s site – that is what he is trolling for.
If I had the free time, I would consider starting a site called fudmeister.com – I would post previous articles and the truth to refute them. I would not provide any links to his site though.
Good old Rob. He is a marketing expert and he is right when he says that Apple will sell didly squat to Enterprise in the fourth quarter. That’s what he said. What he fails to mention is that Apple sells didly squat to enterprise every quarter.
Apple’s big target is consumers and they are increasing those sales BIG TIME every quarter.
Just Rob’s way of pumping FUD into the market for Apple gear and being right in his predictions at the same time.
I still don’t understand the big anticipated jump to mactel. I do very fine, thank you, with my PPC and programs designed by Apple and other Mac vendors. I don’t play video games on my Mac.
I just work and do so quite smoothly. If I needed a new computer now I’d jump at a new dual PPC Mac. The problem with getting a new dual PPC is my old G4 400 works great! One of these days I’ll even upgrade to Tiger.
Panther still kicks butt!
“it’s off to Dell.com for them”
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or Dell.ca in Canada
MikeR -G4 400??!??….gawd that is old…you are no longer an Apple customer, but an operator of an old antique relic.
P.S. Panther sucks compared to Tiger.
Just traded in my cavalier for my 4500 box truck without radio or AC…. I LOVE IT!, the drive train rocks!
btw, I have now warranty, and all the tires are flat.
Hey now, dont knock the G4 400…
thats what my main machine is..
Powermac G4 400Mhz
512MB ram
80GB HDD
16x DVD+/-R/RW
Gigabit ethernet
10.4.2
Still rockin
Paris: PVR functionality in iMacs & PowerMacs, along with video-capable AirPort Express
Slightly after: New Powerbooks with dual-core G4s, video iPod
October/November: Dual-core G5 towers (single and dual proc)
It’s actually a good omen to see Enderle shit on Apple, considering that this is someone who’s warned about Apple’s imminent demise for ages. The day that Enderle starts saying something upbeat about Apple, is the day we should really be worried.
RE: Enderle:
I agree — “FUDmeister”
although instead of “Fear, uncertainty and doubt”, I’ve always liked “Effed-Up Disinformation”
I think Steve Jack is really Enderle and just uses this site to pump up hits on his other site to make it look good to his clients.
I have a G4 400 that runs great today. But thats the difference between Apple and PCs. No way you could be running a PC that old to such effectiveness today.
I have a feeling my dual 2ghz G5 is gonna be running well and in use for like 8 years.
I’m with Hammer. Just quit reporting what he says.
EARTH TO MDN: We don’t care what he has to say about the Mac anymore than anyone cares what Barbara Walters has to say about the space program.
Sales in the enterprise market do open up significant revenue possibilities for Apple, it’s up to them to decide to go for it or not.
Does Apple *want* its market share to grow?
Don’t forget they could have peppered the nation with sustained and compelling G5 ads but didn’t, or they could have spent big ad dollars showing why OSX is better but they have not done that either.
They’re selling Macs by the million, their customer service is rated 20 points over next rival Dell and their hardware reliability is top of the heap. Their OS is pure joy and their ‘boxes’ are beautiful.
Mr Enderle doesn’t get it and I don’t care.
“the study I’m now using did accurately predict that last quarter would be very strong”
The study he is using *now*? So … what study was he using *before*? Let me guess … he was using a study predicting Everything Bad For Apple(TM), and now that it’s been contradicted he is now using a study that predicts Everything Bad For Apple Minus The Last Quarter(TM).
When the next quarter isn’t so bad, I guess he’ll have to switch studies again, won’t he?
By the way, I see no indication that he was talking about anything but the financial fourth quarter … what makes you think he was talking about the Christmas season? The financial 4th may be happening right now, but the results are in the future so it is customary to speak about it as though it hasn’t happened yet.
And oh yeah. One last thing. “A stable platform that will be deployable over a long period of time”? WTF does that mean? Can anyone tell me in plain English what that means? I seriously doubt it. This is a complete BS phrase that means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, much like “maximising shareholder value”.
Enderle is a complete hipacrit!! look at this quote from one of his articles put out today about Blu-Ray
The Blu-ray folks circulated a survey last month, concluding that Blu-ray would win because consumers would prefer it. It was flawed, as most surveys are, by not taking into account the world as it likely will exist at that time. Surveys, in general, are a poor predictor of future behavior (if surveys were accurate predictors, the Ford Edsel, according to the most massive research of its time, should have been a resounding success).