“Twenty-five years ago, Apple hurled a legendary marketing sledgehammer at I.B.M. personal computers that ran Microsoft software. During the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple ran a television ad that depicted those machines as instruments of Big Brotherish conformity. The ad was shown just once, but people still talk about it,” Brad Stone reports for The New York Times.
“Today, Apple is still producing ads that hammer away at computers that run Microsoft’s software,” Stone reports. “But this time, Apple’s pounding is constant, even as Microsoft has been weakened by product stumbles and a series of ads that fell flat with the public.”
“While other technology companies curtail their ad budgets to ride out what appears to be an intense and protracted recession, Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., said in its most recent earnings report that it actually increased marketing and advertising during the last three months of 2008, compared with the same period a year ago,” Stone reports.
“That has made Apple the second-most prolific technology advertiser, behind only Microsoft. During the first nine months of 2008, Apple’s ad spending vaulted to $133 million… During the same period, Microsoft spent $191 million,” Stone reports.
“So far, Apple seems to be winning the fight,” Stone reports. “The Macintosh gained more than 2 percentage points of market share in the last year and now controls nearly 10 percent of the overall market for personal computers, according to the research firm Net Applications.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chuckles the Microsoft CEO” for the heads up.]
