“Apple will likely proclaim the past week’s Macworld expo a success… but deep questions linger as to the future of its computer business,” Red Herring reports. “Reaction from the Mac faithful to the first of Apple’s Intel-powered machines couldn’t have been more positive the day CEO and founder Steve Jobs unveiled them, despite worries that Apple was giving up its unique identity by switching from IBM’s PowerPC chips.”
“But it’s unclear if the initial love shown Apple’s new laptop, called MacBook Pro, and upgraded desktop, will be enough to translate into increased revenue and market share for the Cupertino, California-based company’s computer business,” Red Herring reports. “Apple’s market share is tiny—just 4.2 percent of the personal computing market, according to Gartner. Its bread and butter the past couple of years has been the iPod, but with the portable player’s somewhat low-key presence at the conference, even Apple seems to realize that it must shift emphasis back to computers to survive. It won’t be easy, experts said. ‘Macintosh is not doing very well,’ said Caris & Company analyst Mark Stahlman. ‘Sales of Macs in December were a disappointing 1.2 million. … Expectations were well north of 1.5 million—1.7 million would have been good.’”
“The machines introduced at Macworld may not have what it takes to lift Apple’s doldrums. Though Mr. Jobs touted them as between two and five times faster than current Macs, using Intel’s low-power Core Duo chip, Mr. Stahlman said those speeds aren’t actual measures of performance,” Red Herring reports.
Full article here.
Is it really so hard to realize that the closer to the Intel transition Apple got, the more people waited for the new machines? And it was 1.25 million Macs sold to be correct (according to Apple’s 8-K filed on Jan. 10, 2006); those extra 50,000 machines made last quarter the best for Macintosh ever: last quarter, ended September 05: Apple shipped 1.236 million Macs; the quarter ended June 05: 1.182 million Macs; the quarter ended March 05: 1.07 million Macs; the quarter ended December 04: 1.046 million Macs; and the quarter ended September 04: 836,000 Macs. That’s a pretty clear growth trend and accomplished in the face of a looming major processor transition, no less. Expectations for higher Mac sales were just not realistic. As the Intel transition progresses, any lingering “deep questions” about Apple’s Mac business will evaporate because Apple has started to take orders for and ship the kinds of Macs for which many were waiting.
For more about Caris & Company analyst Mark Stahlman, and an insight into his inability to predict how Apple is doing with their business, please see the related article link below. It contains some of Stahlman’s advice that would have been rather costly to investors if they had actually followed it. Clearly, Mark Stahlman is the one who’s not doing very well.
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Related MacDailyNews article:
Caris & Co analyst downgrades Apple, says ‘current enthusiasm might have overrun the realities’ – April 11, 2005
Expectation abounds for new and innovative products from Apple, something long forgotten with Microsoft. This causes many people to wildly imagine what new software and hardware Apple will release and when. When Apple fails to deliver what their heart’s desire these emotionally labile individuals naturally feel disappointed, somewhat frustrated, and perhaps a bit depressed or angry.
Others, fueled by extremes of jealousy and bitter resentment with Apple, insinuate that any non-release of any product that does not exceed a previous version’s performance and speed by a factor of five is tacit evidence of Apple’s inability to perform to its mythical reputation.
The third group includes those who tend to remain objective, thoughtful, and determined. These people recognize that commitment, intelligence, cooperation, and collaboration yield positive results in time.
Microsoft has had the distinction of historical advantage of prevalence in the 20th century, but will lose as it continues to rely on prior history as justification for current commercial relevance. Microsoft’s hasty and impetuous forays into the new world of integrated home computing and entertainment have left its OS development to languish without adequate support and leadership. It is doubtful that Microsoft can diversify itself without causing irreparable harm to its OS division and, ultimately, the other divisions.
Apple is better positioned, better managed, has better staff, and better understands what is meant by personal computing. Apple will continue to define personal computing in the 21st century by improving what is does well, developing new technologies, and integrating the best and most useful technologies under development.
NSA intercept – you spent at least a half hour or more writing that editorial, right?
This was the Macworld show. Not the iPod show. That’s why they weren’t showcasing the iPod. They have to cover all of their great products. They just don’t need to do it in one venue dedicated to the Mac. This guy has a hidden agenda.
Just a short note about Apple’s advertising.
I think Apple has been pretty smart with the way that they advertise the Mac. Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen brilliant two-page spreads in Scientific American, and full page ads in entertainment magazines. This is smart, because a magazine ad can actually say all the things mentioned above (no virii, no crashing, software abilities, etc) that cannot be easily said in 30 seconds on TV.
TV ads are not the be-all, end-all. In fact, most studies show that an average consumer must see a TV ad 14 times in short succession before the brand name become “automatic” in the minds of the consumer. Apple does not need this, as Apple is already a top-five worldwide brand.
Besides, I just saw an Apple/Intel ad on Yahoo! Comics page. That’s smarter advertising, sends the user directly to apple.com/hardware.
I’ve lived and breathed in the ad world for 22 years now. Word-of-mouth advertising is always better than TV, and Apple has a tonne of W-o-M advertising, and even better, all those millions of people with white earbuds. Apple does not need to put TV ads in heavy rotation.
As has been said, sales is not the only answer. Profit is what’s important, and personally, I’d rather Apple spend a few more million on R&D and innovation rather than a 30-second throwaway ad on American Network TV (or even worse, the Stupour Bowl).
Just my 2 cents
>I imagine they’ll wait for the Intel transition to be complete, before they launch a full-blown campaign though. Maybe by then they’ll be touting the ability to run Windows natively.>
Apple is a dead loss at advertising. Period.
NSA INtercept is right on about that. and he even spelled the word ‘lose’ correctly unlike most people who write in forums. And a good typist could have written that in about 3 minutes.
Still well thought and right on.
dumb dumb dumb 🙁
quote:
Its bread and butter the past couple of years has been the iPod, but with the portable player’s somewhat low-key presence at the conference
—
what?
how many ipods did apple sell in fiscal 2004?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod scrolll way down:
apple sold 4.4 mln in entire 2004 (less than 1 mln in 2003) , and some 14 mln in holiday quarter 2005 alone – I wouldn´t call that “bread and butter” of the past couple of years.
BTW, if the progess of ipod sales continues like this, expect some 50 -60 million iPods to be sold in 2006 (25 mln in holiday quarter 2006) !!!
“For the life of me I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t price thier machines a little more competetively to gain some marketshare.”
I for the life of me can’t understand why people keep perpetuating this myth. I always think it has more to do with person agendas than real market reality. People who say this just want their next Mac to be cheaper so they keep whinging about it.
Look at the price of a similarly equipped PC vs Mac and you will see there is more parity than you realize. Apple jsut refuses to sell a stripped down box and advertise it on tv like Dull does. Yes, thats right, a stripped down box. When you compare similarly equipped Macs and PC’s they are very similar in pricec.
Apple has been pricing their systems “a little more competitively” for years but apparently some people arent going to be satisfied until they are giving them away for free.
Another article (opinion?) written by yet another anal-ist.
I wonder how good he would be doing running Apple. Probably turn it into another Microcrap company.
‘Said Mr. Kay, “It’s interesting that Apple can set itself, one company, against the rest of the industry.”’
Apple just won’t follow the industry. It has ‘set itself’ as a leader, and if Apple sneezes, the industry says ‘God Bless You’.
I totally expected Mac sales to plummet in the six months before Intel machines were introduced, as everyone waited to get the new machine. (And I think everyone knew Apple would release Intel machines at MacWorld, even from the first announcement of the switch).
But all around me, everyone was buying up Macs. People I knew were buying first-time Macs and others were upgrading to Quad Macs, etc.
I love how these analysts are always like “Apple is doomed…” Thirty years and Apple is doing better than ever or at least better than they have in 15 years or so. And think of all the computer companies that used to be huge that have gone out of business in the past 30 years: Packard Bell, NEC, Compaq, Wang, Commodore, Sinclair, IBM (out of the personal computer biz), Gateway (practically) and many others that I don’t even remember the names of. Although Dell loves to rap on Apple and said it should be shut down. I predict Dell will go the way of all these other dinosaurs within 5 years.
http://musobs.blogspot.com
“they say Apple is 4.1 % of total market, what are the percentages of the other companies, in the light of Apples recent eclipse of DELL?”
Veronica, lets not get our statistics confused here. Apple surpassed Dell in Market Cap only, not total sales or number of PC’s sold. Market Cap is a representation of the stock value of a company. It reflects many factors that the market weighs when determining a price of the stock, and the biggest factors here for both Apple and Dell are the fact that people expect Apple to keep innovating, growing and increasing sales while people expect Dell to continue to perform the way they have or very slow increases.
So while it is a great day to thumb our noses at Michael Dell for his past comments, Apple still has a long way to go to surpass Dell in sales and market share.
Let’s see… 14 million iPods sold vs. 1.25 million Macs for the quarter. APPLE IS THE iPod COMPANY!
Apple needs to PROMOTE the iMac as the ultimate iPod accessory. It was obviously designed to compliment it aesthetically.
The iPod ads don’t talk about how bad the other players are do they? They have nothing but positive energy behind them.
Poeple hate “political” smear campaigns during elections. The Intel ad had a negative statement to the Wintel user, turning off potential switchers.
Please Apple, no more negative ads, keep it positive.
Go Apple!!
LET ME INSIST. I’m almost certain there is a big error: somebody said Apple sold 1.25 million CPU’s in the last quarter, not knowing the last quarter ended in september. If I’m right, until the present Apple has not confirmed any result (sorry for my English)
What’s that smell? Oh, it’s that steaming pile of fokking crap left by Red Herring. Hard to take anything they say seriously, it probably is just a “red herring” to throw us off.
MW = figure
as in, that’s what I figure….
The goal of a business is profit. Apple has it.
magic word: large. QED
Yeah, pretty amazing that the company can exceed expectations on both iPods & macs by a big margin, then introduce significantly better machines, even if not quite 2X as fast in day to day use, at the same price point, and these pinheads are not optimistic. Really, what more do you want? 5X faster? whoops, thats the powerbook. . .
Sure, everything comes to an end someday. . . Like in 20 years, won’t Apple be a software peddler more than hardware, but things could not be much better at the moment. Why do I say that’s the direction? Well, Steve & Ives won’t be around forever, and the hardware is already manufactured by contract be some Chinese cheaplabormart that contracts for multiple hardware companies. . .
Didn’t any of you watch the Keynote presentation? Jobs showed Mac sales for the latest quarter (ending Dec 31, 2005) at 1.236m, up from the 1.25m of the September quarter.
MDN, you take is right on. I waited for and have ordered a 20″ Intel-based iMac. The fact Mac sales were strong in the middle of a processor shift is really quite amazing. A lull is to be expected. Bottom line, things are looking good all things considered, and we’re finally seeing Mac ads on TV. 2006 is going to be great and jam-packed with new, revolutionary products. Dual-core processors in every Mac will be a great selling point. By the time Vista arrives, Apple will have mad significant ground. BUCKLE UP!
>>They say Apple is 4.1 % of total market, what are the percentages of the other companies, in the light of Apples recent eclipse of DELL?
Apple’s “eclipse of Dell” was due to iPod sales, not computers.
The single, fundamental problem with all of this analysis of Apple and the computer/technology industry is that Apple is not a player in the common market.
Apple has set itself apart as a premium brand. Think Bose. Think Audi. Think Williams-Sonoma.
Apple is not battling the industry. But the industry insanely thinks it needs to battle Apple, when, in actuality, the industry simply needs to continue it’s path of commodity computing while Apple marches along delivering premium products to those who seek that level of personal technology.
And to Queezzie: Picture trading is actually in its infancy. Low-end picture trading satisfied an immediate and fleeting need (the new baby, the new dog, college dorm tit and dick shots), but as the tools get better and easier to use, more people will tell their stories with this kind of technology as already evidenced in big-player marketing and advertising agencies that use iLife, .Mac, and other such tools to deliver their brand of storytelling to partners and clients.
“Apple’s “eclipse of Dell” was due to iPod sales, not computers.”
I don’t care if Apple is selling elbow macaroni, profit and sales are just that. I love how all the Apple-bashers are putting such a negative spin on anything positive that comes out of Apple. It shows the desperation.
Funny thing is, all their competitors are selling music players too. Should we discount those sales from their numbers?
JUSTIFIED, you are right on bro.
Red Herring always negative about all things Apple!
I smell fear. I smell a worried ‘expert’ who has been proven badly wrong… I think he should have realised by now that he’s dug a hole for himself in April and should have stopped digging.
The bright news is that he is so ISOLATED in his view that there will be very few people who read this and consider it anything more than rubbish…
I think you critcs here, and MDN in particular, are being too narrow in your outlook on what’s being said in this article. It’s not a simple ‘Apple’s gonna fail’ piece. The reporter is elliciting opinions from two different people, and they’re saying two different things.
The guy from Caris & Company, Mark Stahlman, may be off the mark by claiming the recent lower unit sales of computers, right before a major product announcement, is a harbinger of any long term problem. But he’s right when he wonders if the x86’d iMac and Mac Book are themselves what people were expecting, and if they will sell as much as people hoped. The performace claims made by Jobs WERE more vauge than normal, even for him, and the heat and power usage issues of the MacBook, as well as the de-contenting of the whole platform, could easily turn off as many prospective buyers as are turned on by dual cores. Ironically, the iMacintel may be the more attractive product, if only b/c it has the least amount of tradeoffs, but it also clearly wasn’t the computer most had in mind when they thought about in the runup to this year’s Macworld (especially since it was so substantially revised recently).
That may all turn out to be inconsequential, but it is an awful lot of wierdness to be sowing when your trying to convince people to get on board.
The other guy, Endpoint Technologies founder Roger Kay has an even more interesting, if also more esoteric, point: “Mr. Kay said … he thinks that differently designed Macs could cause Apple to become a different company. “The one thing Apple brings to the table is design. They’ll continue to do their own innovations,” Mr. Kay said. “But I can see all that unique stuff becoming applications, not hardware. They’ll start looking more and more like Microsoft,” Apple’s archrival.”
I say, it’s about time the talking heads posited this. We keep saying here how ‘Apple is a hardware company’ (when we’re not saying ‘Apple is a software company’ that is). And in fact both are true. Apple’s success depends on both, sort of in a synergystic kind of way. But how can we realistically dismiss the impact using Intel Standardized Parts (patent pending) is going to have on what hardware Apple makes in the future? It WILL have an impact – it already is!
No FW800. Some sort of new PCMI slot standard Intel’s been pushing for 2 years, but that nobody saw fit to bother with, including Apple, until … now that Intel’s making logic boards for them. Both developments have Intel’s fingerprints all over them. Who knows what else we can’t see? If one considers that the laptop also doesn’t break new ground in looks, or case construction (this when carbon fiber is making itself known in other manufacturer’s lineups), and that even the name is boring … maybe Intel’s dull corporate ‘spirit’ is already taking hold of Apple’s formerly creative ‘body’.
I’m not sure. But I defintely think it’s a question worth considering, and this article is one of the few to bring it up at all. We should be applauding that, not dowsing the page with kool-aid in the hopes it will spontaneously combust from our over-focused fervor.
MW “north” … has nothing to do with anything, but it’s the first not to seem like my mind has been read in a while, so I thought I’d mention it.
You all might have retail stores acting as advertisements for apple in the US and the UK but we have nothing of the sort over here. I agree that they need to get their act together in relation to this. I know they are huge countries population-wise but they cannot hope to gain true global market share without tv ads worldwide. However, i do think that they are painting a bigger picture with the intel transition. At least I hope so because Dull must have a huge market share in Ireland, everything I see is a bloody dell and even over here in a such a small country we get heaploads of their stupid “you cant buy dell in the shops” ads.arrrrggghhhh. ah well, hope things start to change sooner rather than later.
Actual MDN word: Home, as in advertise in my home country.