“The iPad invasion has devoured the netbook business and driven the PC industry into the ground, so expect a price war this Christmas as PC manufacturers, led by Acer and Lenovo, struggle to woo new customers with a PC price war,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “But, with a reputation as a top-tier computer maker which does not compete on price, can Apple’s Mac sales survive the onslaught of the PC price cuts?”
“Apple is expected to sell as many as 4.5 million Macs in its current quarter, and while this isn’t enough (unless you add iPad sales) to drive the firm to the number one slot, it’s none too shabby a record for a company criticized for selling ‘over-priced kit,'” Evans writes. “Perhaps consumers actually want quality products which are packed with features inside well-designed boxes. Perhaps there’s a market for Apple’s design sensibilities. Perhaps that’s why Apple is the most valuable technology company in the world.”
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Evans writes, “Meanwhile the company’s competitors will be looking to the Christmas quarter for just one sign of a chink in the AAPL armor, just a few percentile point slip in its growth. Because that’s how desperate the PC industry in the post-PC era has become. In PCs, as in smartphones, the scent of consolidation is becoming more luminous by the day.”
Read more in the full article here.