“Apple’s decision to sell the Mac OS X Lion upgrade through its own Mac App Store won’t hurt the company’s bottom line but will certainly impact traditional retailers, a market analyst said Friday,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “‘The Best Buys, the Staples, the PC Connections, they all still have a decent Mac software business,’ said Stephen Baker of retail research firm NPD Group. ‘This will have an impact on all those guys. [The release of an OS upgrade] is always a good opportunity for them to connect to customers, get them into the store and thinking about upgrading their devices.'”
“And with Apple pushing Lion only through its download Mac App Store, those retailers will be out of luck this time around,” Keizer reports. “Likely forever, said Baker.”
Keizer reports, “Baker declined to estimate the impact of Apple’s decision on U.S. retailers, saying it was impossible to gauge because NPD has no insights into how much revenue the Mac App Store was generating or how customers will react to Lion. But he said that Apple would easily make more money on Lion than it did on the predecessor, 2009’s Snow Leopard. That upgrade sold $29, but because it was a traditional DVD-based boxed product, Apple didn’t bring in as much per unit as it will with Lion as a download-only title.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s see: More Mac users, no packaging, shipping or stocking costs, same $29 price will ding retailers, but increase Apple’s profit per unit. Je vous remercie, Monsieur évidentes.
Related articles:
Apple gets predatory: OS X Lion price may bite into Microsoft’s bottom line – June 10, 2011
Is Apple’s OS X Lion upgrade plan misguided? – June 9, 2011
Mac OS X Lion with 250 new features available in July via Mac App Store for $29.99 – June 6, 2011
AAPL : SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Less money spent on OS upgrades means more money for other stuff. Suck it up.
Not going to hurt the mom and pop Apple retailers. Apple has cancelled most of their contracts.
That’s an inaccurate statement, contracts have not been cancelled. They have been in fact expanded to serve more areas where there are notApple Stores.
How long until OS updates are free? My guess is not long.
Wow, you mean I got that 10.6.7 update by ill-gotten gains?!
😉
Okay, I guess I should have said ‘Upgrades’, smart alec. ;P
Plus it gets customers more familiar and more comfortable with the App Store, resulting in more people knowing about and using it for otter apps, instead of the traditional sources. This will give more incentive to developers to market their products there too. Offering Lion ONLY via te app store is the BOOM before the avalanche.
Those ‘otter’ apps sound cool!
I’ve never seen MacAnything in Staples. Isn’t PC(Mac)Connections just catalog / online? So much for “get[ting] them into the store and thinking about upgrading their devices.”
This reporter is clueless and guessing.
i think he’s referring to dual boxed stuff at staples. PC/MAC versions on same disc.
maybe stuff like Office for Mac.
I really don’t recall ever seeing any “Apple” software ever sold in staples either. I think the guy is delusional.
The author is totally clueless. To claim that Apple will make more money on each OS sale is just plain stupid. Yes, Snow Leopard was only $29 as well but was priced low as it really didn’t have significant new features other than performance improvements but Apple wanted to get it into as many hands as possible before the next major upgrade. There’s no way they will make more at $29 than they did at the regular upgrade price of $129. Duh!
actually when i was researching in another thread the up to date program, there were quite a few people that did NOT upgrade to leopard when it came out. and stuck with tiger for all those years… SL came, and they upgraded for $29. not the $160 path..
if you are talking the exact same number of installs, yeah $129 would make them more money.
I love it!!!
Even Future Shops with an Apple kiosk in them have sweet diddley in mac software. In fact, unless it is for a game machine, they do not have a whole lot of software for any computers. Lion’s share of the shelf space is Wii, PS3, xbox et al.
“Lion’s share of the shelf space…”
Nice pun, dude! Athough in this case Lion’s share of the shelf space will be zero, and that just fine!
It’s definitely going to hurt retailers. I work for an independent Apple retailer and I’m seeing it first hand already. People come in and ask me questions about Lion and I can’t even pre-order it for them. It costs me time (which is money). Then they leave the store empty handed, with no real reason to return.
Normally when a customer goes to a store to purchase a particular item and it isn’t in stock, they leave, they don’t continue shopping for additional items. However, when they come to pick up an OS on DVD they normally purchase a few other items at the same time. Often I sell RAM, back-up drives, accessories, software etc. with an OS. It’s seldom that I just sell the OS.
Sell them a iTunes gift card for $30.
Improvise.
I hear you on the Accessory purchase, we used to own a Yamaha dealership.
guy off the street walks in to purchase $1000 in accessories for his bikes? Rarely happened.
Guy buys a new bike, and adds $2000 worth of accessories at time of sale? all the time.
BUT, I am happy that someone already figured out how to burn a backup install disc.
I know, I know, but old habits die hard. Now, where is that safety blanket?
@Cubert: Can you post a link to instructions for burning a backup install disc of OS X Lion?
It’s not only retailers who are out of luck if OS X Lion remains a download-only product. Many, many Mac users live in areas not served by high-speed internet. Downloading a 4GB file over a satellite or dialup connection is an impossible task. I suppose these people will have to download the OS X upgrade in the nearest Apple Store and copy it to a flash drive (assuming the .dmg file is easy to locate).
it’s all over the place but this is the top of the list on google.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/08/create-burn-bootable-mac-os-x-lion-install-disc/
I just did the exact same process with the Xcode install. easy to do.
Apple should offer the same restore thumbnail drives it does for MacBook Airs. I suspect that future Macs (MBs, iMacs, et al.) will come with these, as I can’t see Apple going back to OSs on DVDs, especially since, even if it doesn’t offer an OS on thumbdrives, burning a restore disc (i.e., disc image) is relatively simple. It also increases Apple’s profits and the company’s environmental profile.
Still, provisions should be made — even if just an option — for people for whom downloading a 4-gig file would be, practically speaking, next to impossible, and an exercise in frustration at best.
I thought apple was going that route when the MBA’s hit. Was very hapy. then my new iMac arrived… bah, disc’s.
I’ll still make a DVD of my Lion upgrade though.
And i bet Apple will say bring your mac into an apple store and we’ll let you download it in store on our WiFi. or something similar.
I would bet that Lion on App store only will be version 1.0 and it will change somehow. ability to purchase a DVD/USB someday.. or ability to go to an Apple retailer to get an Official DVD made for you maybe? somehow tied to your AppleID maybe..
But NO retail box sitting on a shelf anywhere.
What if you haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard and therefore do not have the App Store? Guess you are SOL or have to buy Snow Leopard just so you can upgrade to Lion.
I have Snow Leopard but prefer a clean install to an upgrade install, how does that work?
look around.
there are ways to put the download on a disc. read all the Lion articles this past week, or just search them. people HAVE burned a disc with the dev install, and was able to do a clean install from that.
as long as apple doesn’t stop that before they launch Lion…
and as far as i know, yes you will have to upgrade to SL first. which you could find ways around that if you really wanted to…
I’ve rarely seen any of the stores mentioned seem to actualy give a shlt about Apple. So who cares if they loose the tiny bit income they might receive from the sale of Lion.