Topic Post #2: Apple's Tipping Point: Macs For The Masses
Apple's Tipping Point: Macs For The Masses
This is a very interesting thought about Apple's product marketing strategy. As the auther mentioned in this article:
Until January 2005, Apple had no iPod or PC products that served the mass market. With the launch of iPod Shuffle and Mac mini they have finally converged two product paths with the mass market in mind. ( Typical product line extention [Kotler, P289-290] and brand extention.[Kotler, P296-297]) This will not only drive more iPod sales (via the Shuffle), but also fulfill the promised "halo" effect of the iPod products as PC users jump to the Mac mini. This is through apple's products mix[Kotler, P290] The Mac mini could bring Apple to a tipping point in which a combination of factors create strong double digit market share in the mass-PC market, as Windows-based PC's continue to suffer from viruses and adware and users are drawn to the elegant and affordable simplicity of the Mac mini. From the concept of product line extention, [Kotler, P289-290], these two products perfectly fits into Apple's original line products through product line stretch.
The Three market sections defined here:
High-end Market/Middle Market/Mass Market:
The Sweet Spot: Inside the Mass Market Psychological Price Barriers ($100 for MP3 players, $500 for personal computers)
With the Mac mini, Apple further expanded the old Macintosh model matrix that had once cleanly separated desktop from laptop, consumer from professional.
4 Comments:
I wonder if these psychological price barriers were a factor in the recent Apple's decision to drop PowerPC and go with Intel chips.. After all, the price-to-perfomance ration seem to be lower for Intel.
andre, you may be right. certainly some interesting things going on in the apple camp. (and when i get time, i will be able to set up my iPod shuffle!)
Yeah, people has been talking about Apple might jump on Intel since January, and now it's confirmed.
The reason? Actually I heard that IBM reluctant to make more development efforts on the power pc chip which used by Apple's PowerBook laptop.IBM's future chip plans are focused elsewhere — notably the next generation of video game consoles made by Microsoft Corp., IBM's chips also power several kinds of IBM server computers, which account for a huge chunk of the company's hardware revenue.
Both kinds of machines require such high levels of performance that it becomes an expensive and challenging proposition to adapt their chips for personal computers, especially mobile devices that present stricter energy and cooling requirements.
So while winning Apple's business gives Intel some bragging rights, ceasing to make chips for Macs will let IBM focus on markets it believes can be much bigger.
"It's never a happy time when you lose a customer, no matter how large they are, but Apple's impact on the PC market is marginal at best these days," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research. "It will have more of a PR impact than a financial impact."
A lot has been written this week about Apple's switch from IBM to Intel chips.
Not a lot has been written about what IBM might do now.
The chip business is moving in two directions at once, toward mass production and mass customization.
A Microsoft order for XBox chips means mass production. Orders for FPGA chips onto which a process may be programmed represent mass customization.
An order for Mac chips falls somewhere between the two. Extensive development is needed for one customer, but is production really high enough to beat Moore's Second Law, the idea that costs rise with complexity, and grow exponentially?
It's possible that IBM concluded, not any more. Given Apple's proprietary model, the contract may not have been worth fighting for.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/index.php?p=325&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog
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