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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Apple to go into the operating system business?
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Apple to go into the operating system business? | Apple to go into the operating system business? |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Wednesday, 02 April 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Macs are not iPods. While they certainly provide value
for money, Macs are at the premium end of the personal computing market
and they come in a limited number of models and configurations. As
most Mac users will tell you, Apple makes beautiful hardware. However,
it's hardware that doesn't provide the flexibility, choice and price
points required by more than 90% of personal computing users that
continue to choose Windows only PCs.Featured Whitepaper
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Most will argue that Apple, being a hardware company, would never allow such a thing because selling Leopard to the PC market would cannibalise Apple's Mac sales. I would argue the opposite. The vast majority of Mac users would stay with the products they know and trust. Most of them don't care or want to know about Windows PCs and those that do have a need for Windows would rather install it on their beloved Macs than buy PCs. There would be very little leakage of the single mouse button brigade because they love the design, the elegance, the coolness and the whole Apple Mac experience. On the other hand, there's an untapped market of 1 billion PC users, many of whom are highly dissatisfied with Vista and Windows in general, that literally could be ripe for the picking for Apple. Offering a version of Leopard to large sections of that market initially through selected major OEM vendors would without a doubt produce significant software sales and additional revenues for Apple. Perhaps even more importantly for Apple, however, is that a far wider audience than just Mac users would be exposed to Leopard, probably the most advanced personal computing operating system available today. Some of those users may decide to buy Macs the next time round and some may not but Apple will still be selling more software - and as we all know the margins on software are phenomenal. On that point, those who argue that Apple is first and foremost a hardware company may not be correct. Many market analysts believe that the major reason behind Apple's marginalisation as a computer company in 1980s and 1990s was that the company thought it was in the business of making computers when in fact it was really in the business of making superior operating systems. |
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