What Apple should do to increase market share.

[chemistry_geek]

I just read on Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org/) and CNet (http://www.cnet.com/) that M$ is getting nervous about Apple's new marketing campaign and the stability and feature set of Mac OS X. I was thinking...if Apple wants to REALLY increase market share, it should GIVE AWAY via a PC trade-in (running M$ Windows OS ONLY) to any PC user. Apple would have to advertise that it would transfer all the users files to the new Mac FREE of charge. The new Mac would be similarly equivalent to the traded PC as far as performance is concerned. And of course, top of the line Power Macs would not be part of the deal. Apple would only need to do this for two weeks, four times a year. This would eat a little into profits, but it would be gaining NEW converts from Windows thereby increasing its market share. Once the PC user gets used to Mac OS X and would prefer to use nothing else, they'd be hooked into purchasing additional Apple hardware. Apple could sweeten the deal even more by giving away a low cost digital camera or video recorder with the trade-in. This would really rattle old Billie boy and further drive the divide between Apple and M$.

This would be an excellent way for Apple to rid itself of unsold hardware sitting in warehouses on the even of newer and faster Macintoshes.

Apple could resell the traded-in PC's on eBay, or install Linux on them and ship them off to 3rd world countries for a tax write-off.

[voice-]

Oh please do! I've been longing to put my PC to good use, an old Mac laptop would be a good use...

[pezagent]

Regardless of what Apple's PR machine is throwing out to the media (I really doubt MS is worried about OSX, please), Apple's strategy doesn't need to be gaining market share.

Marketshare is a thing of the past. The myth of marketshare is that is automatically guarantees profits. Not so. Only a profit-centric business design will produce the greatest profits. I'm not sure if anybody at Apple knows anything about business-design, or if they care. The latest Switch ads seem to reflect a sort of cross-fingers approach.

I agree that the Switch campaign in itself is not enough to get people to buy Mac. It may hook them, which is probably the entry strategy, and we may see the switch campaign evolve into something involving rebates, etc, but for now, it's just plain *stoopid*.

As far as Apple selling things on eBay--somehow me thinks Steve Jobs would think that to be too "tacky".

[raoullynotnice]

Of course M$ is worried about Apple's market share. Not because of the current cash flow, but as long as Apple exists, they must work harder to control the market. Ultimately, that is what users should be worried about- MicroSoft would like to control everything (including your bank account and retirement fund). I think it was the head of Sun who not-too-long-ago stated that "There is nothing standing between MicroSoft and total world domination, except Sun and Apple."

If you do not see the WinTel vs Apple problems in terms of free speech, then you need to think a little deeper about this. Its way more important than how much money M$ will make this year. The real question is "WHO OWNS THE INTERNET?" Based on his early career, Bill Gates probably expects us to give it to him so that he can sell it back to us.

[malexgreen]

Apple should make aggressive moves into corporate IT accounts. It should provide package deals for coporate buyers who are willing to buy their PowerMacs, Powerbooks, and XServe units in
sizeable volumes. They should price/position/advertise these to beat the prices of PC-based manufacturers. They need to have a very strong TCO story. They should use the fact that PowerMacs are desktop-friendly, but can be cheaply configured as servers. They need to push for the infrastructure to make best use of the PowerMac features. Apple should be driving wireless ethernet, gigabit ethernet, and bluetooth into the computer industry.

They need to make the Apple architecture as ubiquitous as the PC-architecture. This means they need to partner with ISV's, and component OEM's in various industries (financial, science/engineering, manufacturing, not just movies and arts and education) and enable ISV's that do software/hardware for these industries to make their applications/products run best on Apple.

They need to make Apple PowerMacs/PowerBooks open. I don't mean they need to bring back CHRP, but they need to make sure that people have a full range of options in terms of how a owner may want to expand their MAC. The Mac OSX should work with various types of hardware. I user shouldn't feel constrained to only a certain type of card. People shouldn't have to throw away their printers. I should be able to use a three-button mouse, etc., etc.

imho

[Titanium]

you have GOT to be kidding!!
first thing right away:
M$ is in NO WAY AT ALLLLLLLLLLLL impressed nor intimidated or nervous about apple. if M$ is starting to get a lil nervous than it is about linux and companies like IBM featuring linux on their server systems! and if you speak of 'apple increasing its market share' and all?
the 'trade a pc for a mac' idea is the biggest bunch of bogus i've ever heard!!! HA HA HA
you think a company like apple, that is actually ditching some of its most reliable and 'long time' fans/consumers by suddenly charging them for iTools oooooppssss..SORRY its '.mac' now!! (blech)
because they need to make that 'we are oh so elite and prestigous' statement is gonna do something like that? trust me...apple does not WANT you..if you can't afford them! its part of their philosophy. im totally pissed of at this 3 step os x update program....where jaguar now is the os that mac os x 10.0 should have been. apple managed to charge 3 times for one os.
thats 10.0
update to 10.1
and finally 10.2
where like i said, 10.0 promised all the things that just now happened in 10.2.
this is in no way 'rare pratice' as M$ is doing this for years and years and years. it just happens to surprise me a little bit, as i was always convinced that apple might be a little more expensive, yet is 'fair' and got this 'family' type of thing going. well it seems that mr steve snobs is trying to get rid of that very very quickly. he wants the CEO's and .com guys to carry around his quicksilver prestige machines next to their porsche keys and hilton key-cards.
this is the new world. this is the new apple.
they're out to polish up their image. away from the 70's flower-power-rainbow-apple-logo-loving-hippies towards the silver-and-black-what-do-i-do-with-all-my-money people. well, all i can say is that this is NOT the way to increase market share. i was a fanatic apple fan/user. not anymore.
i got a desktop amd athlon 1800xp+ running winblows xp (for a buncha games that are not available on any other platform) and linux-gnu/debian for all the stuff i need to get done. my ti-book is running macosx jaguar because i still find it hard to give up on apple and thus give up the last pieces of hope i have left and parallel on another partition...debian for ppc.
mac os x turned into a 'toy-pet' for me which i am rapidly losing all interest in. the eye candy gui can not cover up some sever perfomance flaws the system has and the whole new philosophy is not one for me. well, after all thats probably what steve cocks wanted.

take care and dont lose a tooth biting into a raw apple....

a very disappointed mac-user

the king of irons,

titanium

[PowermacG4_450]

apple cant afford to give away free macs. get real. they could work on getting the prices down somehow.

increasing market share? how about this: increase the FREE warranty on a new mac to 2 yrs? 3 yrs? 1 yr warranty sucks. (my viewsonic monitor has a 3 yr warr, why not a mac?)

how about a mac trade-up program? I think gateway does this? not sure totally how it works.

just a thought.

And, open an apple store in annapolis maryland.

Hmmmm, CAN the compusa thing? thats a darn shame, the lack of mac stuff these days in a compusa store compared to when they started.

how about. an all Mac/Apple product catalog? Everything apple sells/offers in a magazine/or catalog, shipped to every home in the usa?

[jove]

Apple needs M$. If M$ gets really pissed they might do something like sabotage Office for the Mac. They've done it before!! In the mid 90s I was working in a Mac office. The office switched to PCs because MS Office for Mac sucked so bad we couldn't work with PC customers' files.

As for getting into the business market, it'd be great but Apple has a long, long way to go. There is a ton of specialized commercial business software out there that is Windows-only. Even if all of that software were available for Mac, the custom business software industry is mostly Windows-only. Then there's software to interface with databases, legacy systems and IS management systems.

Before Apple can even think of making software available, they have to reach the minds of business decision makers. These minds are mostly closed to the Mac. I know. I've worked in the custom business software industry for a while. Managers who can't figure out how to put attachments on email (but who make decisions on technology purchases) are surprised that Apple is still around. The Windows geeks in IS are convinced that Macs are "girlie machines" and won't even think of using one. (Although some UNIX geeks now take the Mac seriously.)

Apple is nowhere in business. They're doing the right thing by trying to get into (and stay in) arts and video.

I think the Switchers campaign is excellent. It's not about getting people to actually switch (although that's nice). The campaign is about teaching people that Macs can do what PCs do. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that!