martijnvandijk
Registered
Maybe it is as simple as this
There's no such thing as a PC user or a Mac user. There's actually 3 kinds of computer users:
1 - Ignorant, non-savvy people, trying and struggling to send their first email and browsing their first web sites. They are yet to experience the complete hell of multimedia on their recently acquired low-priced PC (My estimate: about 80% of the addressable market)
2 - Experienced, non-freaky users, disappointed by the possibilities and shortcomings of the PC world and looking for improvement of their situation. These customers are ready for a Mac. However, as the sunk cost theory doesn't mean anything to them, they feel stuck with their 2500 PC which they would have to replace. And especially since they have continued spending on it since they bought the machine (added a new graphics card, replaced the processor and upgraded the DVD-player to a DVD-burner), they will never ever get anything more then 500 for it when they try to sell it. Therefore, a large share of them will just stick to their existing machine, trying to make the best out of it. The fact that the Mac is so poorly available and actual advertisement/PR is almost non-existent does not help getting them to switch of course. My intelligent guess is that this group is about 15% of the total market.
3 - Techy, freaky, very advanced customers (like all of us here?), knowing exactly what they want. They won't switch to anything else they want themselves and they are using their preferred OS already for many years and they have a perfectly good reason for using it. Not the part of the market Apple should be trying to address, as it is almost saturated.
In short, the customers that need a Mac the most (group 1 & 2) are virtually unreachable as the true virtues of the Mac are too difficult to explain (they have no reference) of the switch is just too costly. Therefore, Apple will stick with their current customers and will only gradually convert some of the PC users.
Does that mean there is no hope?
To the contrary.
Apple is already making some smart moves, locking in the new customers. We have seen substantial price decreases for all Macs, reducing the entry barrier for new customers. Once an Apple customer, you'll be very unlikely to switch back again, for all the reasons we know. To ensure this, Apple is further developing customer locking-in and upgradable concepts like iLife, iSync, .Mac and soon a new Music download service, making it less and less likely that a customer will ever leave the Mac-heaven.
Also, by developing cross-OS products like the iPod and flawless integration with the most important Windows software like internet browsing, office-applications and multimedia programs, the interoperability concerns of the new customers are addressed.
That leaves Apple with the need to upgrade its Marketing and Sales strategies: realize physical availability of Macs in stores, ensure availability of (gaming) software, co-operate fully with banking/fiscal solutions currently solely offered to PC users and stop excluding international (Non-US) users from online services like Sherlock and iPhoto printing.
Put all above in a smart, multi-channel switch campaign and start behaving a bit more like MS and many more of us will be in Apple-heaven soon.
Just my two cents
There's no such thing as a PC user or a Mac user. There's actually 3 kinds of computer users:
1 - Ignorant, non-savvy people, trying and struggling to send their first email and browsing their first web sites. They are yet to experience the complete hell of multimedia on their recently acquired low-priced PC (My estimate: about 80% of the addressable market)
2 - Experienced, non-freaky users, disappointed by the possibilities and shortcomings of the PC world and looking for improvement of their situation. These customers are ready for a Mac. However, as the sunk cost theory doesn't mean anything to them, they feel stuck with their 2500 PC which they would have to replace. And especially since they have continued spending on it since they bought the machine (added a new graphics card, replaced the processor and upgraded the DVD-player to a DVD-burner), they will never ever get anything more then 500 for it when they try to sell it. Therefore, a large share of them will just stick to their existing machine, trying to make the best out of it. The fact that the Mac is so poorly available and actual advertisement/PR is almost non-existent does not help getting them to switch of course. My intelligent guess is that this group is about 15% of the total market.
3 - Techy, freaky, very advanced customers (like all of us here?), knowing exactly what they want. They won't switch to anything else they want themselves and they are using their preferred OS already for many years and they have a perfectly good reason for using it. Not the part of the market Apple should be trying to address, as it is almost saturated.
In short, the customers that need a Mac the most (group 1 & 2) are virtually unreachable as the true virtues of the Mac are too difficult to explain (they have no reference) of the switch is just too costly. Therefore, Apple will stick with their current customers and will only gradually convert some of the PC users.
Does that mean there is no hope?
To the contrary.
Apple is already making some smart moves, locking in the new customers. We have seen substantial price decreases for all Macs, reducing the entry barrier for new customers. Once an Apple customer, you'll be very unlikely to switch back again, for all the reasons we know. To ensure this, Apple is further developing customer locking-in and upgradable concepts like iLife, iSync, .Mac and soon a new Music download service, making it less and less likely that a customer will ever leave the Mac-heaven.
Also, by developing cross-OS products like the iPod and flawless integration with the most important Windows software like internet browsing, office-applications and multimedia programs, the interoperability concerns of the new customers are addressed.
That leaves Apple with the need to upgrade its Marketing and Sales strategies: realize physical availability of Macs in stores, ensure availability of (gaming) software, co-operate fully with banking/fiscal solutions currently solely offered to PC users and stop excluding international (Non-US) users from online services like Sherlock and iPhoto printing.
Put all above in a smart, multi-channel switch campaign and start behaving a bit more like MS and many more of us will be in Apple-heaven soon.
Just my two cents
