More about PC Sales

Just following on from my last entry.

According to this piece in The Register:

Apple was the only major computer maker to increase its shipments into the UK PC market during the final three months of 2011.
The article was quoting figures from Gartner that excluded iPad sales, despite that Apple showed a growth in shipments of 17.2% when comparing Q4 2010 to Q4 2011.

Comparatively HP dropped 27%, Dell dropped 32.2%, Acer lost 62.4% and Toshiba lost 5.4%.

The big question is if this is being driven by:

1. Everyone wants a Mac because Windows is so yesterday.
2. Everyone is waiting for Ultrabooks running Windows.
3. Everyone has decided to skip Windows 7 and wait for Windows 8.

I do know that many training providers for the corporate markets are now offering Mac training on a regular basis so maybe there is a change happening in the market.

Will Apple Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?

Since the return of Steve Jobs to Apple they’ve just gone from strength to strength with a few missteps along the way.

iMac
iPod
iPhone
iPad
iTunes
MacBook
MacBook Pro
MacBook Air
Apple Stores
the upcoming iCloud that we hope launches better than MobileMe
the App Store

That’s a lot of winners.

Now Apple is making inroads into the corporate market, the potential to become a massively dominant player is within their grasp.

Will they ‘screw the pooch’? Sad to say that a very possible scenario.

If you look at the recent launch of Final Cut Pro X you’d have to say that was pretty comprehensively screwed up. Apple managed to piss off a vast majority of editors with that one. I know they’re saying just wait for the updates and all will be good, but people don’t want to wait for the updates. They want it to be good when they get it.

That’s kind of like buying a Porsche and discovering that the wheels are on a boat from Outer Mongolia so you’ll just have to wait until they arrive and THEN everything will be really good. Promise.

The truth of the matter is that Apple do not, and appear to never have, understood the corporate market. Sure they understand it better than the Gnomes of Mountain View, but they don’t get it like Microsoft do.

I talked about this some time back in this old blog entry at Anthill. Apple just don’t seem to get corporate customers, but, there is a chance that this may change with the Commonwealth Bank deploying 4000 MacBook Air laptops to replace their fleet of Dell laptops.

If they don’t screw things up at the Commonwealth and they can learn about what corporates want, they might, just might, figure out how to crack this market sector.

That being said if anyone can screw up a deal like this its Apple.

The best Tech Industry Analyst on the Planet.

Each morning people look to their inbox to read the latest piece of financial prognostication from the merchant bank employed augury.

With bated breath they wait to see what pearls of wisdom they’ve gleaned from reading the entrails of some dead animal, or the patterns of the clouds, flights of birds or even the alignment of the planets.

The readers of these inarticulate Nostradamus like ravings then trade their hard earned on the basis of these obscure prophecies. They also pay good money to get these ‘briefings’.

I’ve met the best Tech Industry Analyst on the planet. My 5 year old.

The other day I was in JB Hi-Fiand something struck me.

As I was walking through the computers I noticed that all the kids (and a lot of the adults) were happily playing with the iPads, iMacs and MacBooks. Most of the people in the store were also rocking an iPhone.

The Windows machines - and there were a lot of them (mostly from Dell) didn’t have a soul fiddling with them. JB Hi-Fi (at least at this store) were giving over about 20 meters of shelf space to these machines and I wasn’t seeing anyone show any interest.

In fact they had an Alienware laptop on display. I mean this is a rockstar of a gaming laptop with horsepower to spare, glowing lights, backlit keyboard, awesome performance and no one was giving it the time of day.

Now I don’t know how much Dell pay JB for the shelf space, if anything, but, I also noticed that JB had all Dell stock marked down. Still no one was buying, or even remotely interested.

Here’s why I’d be worried if I were Microsoft. All the kids, and I mean ALL the kids. Wanted to play with the Apple gear. They were waiting for a turn and I’ve seen this in other places too.

I remember many years back, kids would want to line up and play with Windows machines. Yeah. I know. Somebody’s going to talk about games and gaming. The demo XBox and Playstations weren’t being used either.

The kids wanted to play with the Apple gear. I even heard some kids complaining when their parents wanted to leave the store because they wanted to keep playing with the equipment.

If so many kids want to play with Apple equipment and not Windows - in a few years, when they’re making the buying decisions I think Microsoft will be in a pack of trouble.

They’re losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation of buyers.

The Apple Double Play.

I just finished reading an article in PC Magazine that really got me thinking.

The piece was entitled ‘The Apple Product That Really Worries PC Vendors’.

It really got me thinking, especially in light of the fact that the Commonwealth Bank recently decided to arm their staff with MacBook Air laptops.

The interesting this about this was the following:

Branch visitors were free to use iMac, iPad, iPod and Asus touchscreen devices to browse foreign exchange rates, products, and to make appointments with CBA specialists – much like how Apple customers arranged to visit the vendor’s ‘Genius bar’.
The bank also planned to replace internal Dell desktops with MacBook Air notebooks nationwide, allowing employees to choose to operate on either Mac OS or Windows platforms.

Wow! I really mean WOW!

Think about this in terms of the the information from Canalys that I mentioned in this post ‘Wintel Market Share Slips’.

The Commonwealth Bank, the guys who hung on to OS/2 for years past its expiry date are doing a widespread deployment of Apple MacBook Air laptops. This is astounding news.

Here’s the really amazing potential - lets assume that they replace all 4000 Dell laptops with the MacBook Air. Here’s the really interesting maths:

4000 copies of Windows 7 Entreprise, even at the best possible price couldn’t be less that $175 a copy, lets call it $150 just to keep the calculations simple. Lion is $31.99.

That means a saving on OS upgrade costs of $472,040.

Half a Million Dollars saving on an Operating System upgrade!

Where would you want the half million, on your bottom line or on Microsoft’s?

Careful of your answer, your shareholders are watching.

Alas poor WebOS we knew thee not at all.

So HP has pulled up stumps, plans to sell off its bat and ball and go back to Palo Alto.

Leo Apotheker has decided that playing in this space is something that HP just can’t do. HP is also going to look at, maybe, getting rid of their PC business.

So lets get this straight, in 2001 HP bought Compaq, who were having indigestion from their acquisition of Digital. A lot of HP shareholders, including Walter Hewlett objected to the purchase and the deal just squeaked through (and there were noises about a bunch of back room deals being done to get it over the line).

Now, ten years later it looks like leaving Compaq alone would have been the smart thing to do.

HP announced that they would be looking at considering “a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction”.

Good move Leo, looks like PSG was your best performing division and sold more units than your nearest competitor, Dell. Lets chalk another one up for management genius in this decision.

Rewind to 2010. HP buys Palm for $1.2 Billion. Why? Because we’ve got to get into the phone, handheld doohickey marketspace.

Today HP announces that “it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

That sound you hear is a billion dollars being flushed down the toilet.

The fact is that margins are being squeezed in the PC business and HP doesn’t want to compete against guys like Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and Toshiba. In the tablet/phone business they just couldn’t make it work, but at least were smart enough to figure they should get out sooner rather than later.

This is telling us that when it comes to Mergers and Acquisitions that are made to gain market share or shut down competitors, it rarely ever works so what does this tell us to expect from the Googorola mutant as time goes by?

Have a look at this piece from The Register - HP chief bows to Jobsian cult.

The interesting part of the discussion is at the end of the article where it quotes Leo saying

"Due to market dynamics, significant competition, and a rapidly changing environment – and this week’s news only reiterates the speed and nature of this change – continuing to execute our current device approach in this marketplace is no longer in the best interest of HP and HP shareholders.

It's not. All those shareholders are wishing they'd bought Apple. The tablet effect is quite real, and it's affecting desktops and notebook sales at Apple too. It's driving them up.”