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Comment by kick | Hacker News Reader

Market-share might be higher, but the market is much smaller, and it's still a minority. Selling to a minority in the US is much more profitable than selling to a minority in Europe, solely because of scale.

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> the market is much smaller

How so? The population of Europe is about double the population of the USA. Even if you narrow it down to the european union, it is still larger than the USA. Why should the market for laptops be smaller in Europe? Are you sure?

Country-specific keyboards may be s factor.

Probably not. Most european keyboards are just differenr caps on the iso layout. Modern keyboards in the western world are usually ANSI or iso, and I believe there are one or two prominent layouts used in Asian countries.

I have never understood why the ANSI layout is popular. The compromises of the iso layout to cram the extra keys in are hardly noticeable apart from the right pinky if you touch type.

The key caps are different, of course, but that can't be very expensive.

I'm absolutely sure, yes, especially if we're talking about the EU alone (but I'd prefer to argue for Europe as a whole), that the market for high-end laptops is significantly smaller. Eastern Europe is an order of magnitude poorer, and is the reason Europe's population is higher than the USA's (that said, there is a reason I initiated with "America"; these customizations are also offered in Canada, and North America is conventionally considered a single market).

Especially when considering localizations that have to be made, and that the most valuable European countries require you get physical technical goods certified per-country (mainly looking at Germany here), and that they're getting taxed more, the margin that you can get from Europe is much smaller already than in America. It doesn't make sense to offer the same extent of customization (which, too, lessens margin) as in America.

Was curious so looked this up -- the North American market is bigger than the EU by ~50 million people.

It's even more apparent when you compare them by GDP.

Canada doesn't have Lenovo with Linux preinstalled (only Windows & Chrome OS) on their product list. I would assume Mexico and the other islands are also excluded. So it's really only US vs EU.

It seems like it's changed from about two years ago; really strange.

Then again the North American market is ~500 million, the European market is ~750 million. Also the current statistics (I linked to them in a comment below) suggest Linux usage in North America at ~1.5%, and in Europe at ~2%. This suggests higher usage in Europe.

US plus Canada is just 23% larger than EU by GDP [1]. Based on PPP it's 20% [2]. Considering we are talking about ~20 trillion in GDP and very similar PPP, that hardly seems to be a large enough difference to give your "absolute sure" statement merit.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...

Look at median household income to get a better picture of the market for high-end laptops; what your customers have to spend is a better way to figure out how big your market is than raw bodies or statistics that can be heavily-influenced by single entities. Buying a laptop that's 3% of your household's yearly income is a ridiculous financial decision, and given that most of Lenovo's business laptops start at near that range for your average person in significant amounts of countries in the EU, I'd wager that the market is smaller.

You make a good point though in that my mention of GDP elsewhere in this thread was mostly irrelevant, though; thanks for helping me refine this argument.

You're making a lot of assumptions based on arbitrarily chosen and only tangentially relevant criteria, and superficial analysis.

I'm absolutely sure you have no reason to be absolutely sure the second you implied the numbers I linked to must be wrong but your back of the napkin calculation must be correct.

One more data point: Apple has a 30% higher market share in NA than in Europe. ChromeOS has a ~5 times higher market share in NA. This goes out of everyone else's market share.

Most of your comments in this thread have been dull and poorly-conceived strawmanning with ad hominem interlaced. If you don't see how "income of population" relates to "What citizens will spend money on," you're surely joking.

I'm going to respond to you entirely here, because I dislike responding to the same person making variations of the same comment in multiple places. Here's the important bit of your other comment:

You brought up population, GDP, average income, etc. None of these explicitly support your claim, half of them actually work against it.

Here's the entire comment, just for fairness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970804

Note that one of these is a blatant lie; I was not the person who brought up population in this thread, and I've done nothing but point out reasons as to why it's not a perfect representation of the market.

I already admit that GDP was largely a mistake to bring up when I can make the point better and easier with average income.

Your accusation of using any "back of the napkin calculation" is similarly ridiculous. Every single number I've cited is trivially verifiable to anyone with an internet connection.

You've been repeating "Linux market share is higher in Europe!", and sure, you've given a source for that. Market-share, however, is not market-size, as I've repeatedly said in this thread. To demonstrate it in a simple fashion so you can't avoid what I'm saying anymore: 100% of a market of 10 is less than 1% of a market of 1,000,000,000. "X has a higher share of the market in Europe than it does the US!" means very little on its own.

If the market in Europe is smaller than the United States, which isn't particularly controversial (that the entirety of the PC market in the US is just slightly smaller than the entirety of it in EMEA is fairly strong evidence [1]), the US is the bigger market, regardless of how much you repeat the market-share claim.

Especially when comparing luxury markets like high-end computing gear, what the population can spend is a significant factor in how big the market is: the United States' median person & median household has more to spend than the median person & household in most countries of Europe. This is not controversial whatsoever, and is trivially verifiable. [2] [3]

[1] Gartner's quarterly reports on it for the past decade; linking ten years of them would make this comment too large, but if you search their site with the query "PC shipments", you'll get the data.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

[3] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Your premise was that the European market is not valuable enough to receive the same attention.

>> yet they are impossible to buy

> That's only because you're in a less valuable market

Your assumptions based on very indirect evidence of household income did nothing to support that claim. The difference should be pretty sizable. This is akin to saying "Europe has socialized medical system and free studies". While entirely true, it might or might not support the idea that people have less worries and more money for things like computers.

You stopped short of actual numbers because it "would make this comment too large". Q3/Q4 2019 Gartner estimates [0][1]:

> In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 14.8 million units in the third quarter of 2019, a 0.3% decline from the third quarter of 2018

> The EMEA PC market grew 3% in the third quarter of 2019, with shipments totaling 19.4 million units

> PC shipments in EMEA increased 3.6% year over year to 21 million units, with the fourth quarter of 2019 marking the second consecutive quarter of shipment growth as regional demand improves.

Africa and Middle East cannot account for enough of those shipments to support your claim that the growing (even if severely held back by Brexit) European market is not valuable enough to warrant attention, especially when shipments are slowing down in other regions. By the looks of it the markets are similarly sized even including Apple shipments which are not really relevant for the discussion. There is simply no data to support your claim. If the European market is not getting enough attention, its value is definitely not the reason. Feel free to keep going.

[0] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-10-1...

[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-01-1...

Because Europeans don't buy the latest MacBook every year.

A laptop lasting 4 years is perfectly reasonable in Europe.

I agree with you about the population, but that is not the whole picture.

Is the consumption pattern different? Less disposable income? No prevalence of credit cards? Is this really a noticeable effect/difference?

Apple machines were never really that popular in Europe because they weren't marketed as intensively as in the US. Schools and companies were never equipped with them unless we're talking about video/graphics people. And half of Europe was not considering such expensive purchases until well into the '90s, perhaps even later. By then Windows was already skyrocketing, regular PCs were cheaper, and very few customers were invested in the Apple ecosystem enough (or at all) to push them towards Macs.

If anything I imagine Apple machines are taking their 5% market share in the US more from the Linux segment than Windows.

This doesn't make so much sense to me, at universities I've seen a ton of Apple laptops among students and professors. Clearly they broke through there.

> but the market is much smaller

How do you figure that? Statistics just say Linux has just over 2% market share in Europe [0], ~1.74% in the US [1], and ~1.5% in North America. Apple has a 30% higher market share in NA than in Europe. ChromeOS has a ~5 times higher market share in NA. This goes out of everyone else's market share.

The EU alone is ~450 million citizens, ~30% higher than the US. Europe has ~750 million citizens, ~50% more than North America.

Any reason to suspect that despite the higher population and the higher market share within that, there are still substantially fewer Linux users in Europe? And if so, what are the actual numbers of end users for each? You'd have to assume the "desktop market" is more than 3 times lower in Europe vs. NA to conclude that there are fewer Linux user in Europe.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/europe

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

[2] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-ame...

Linux users does not equal people able/willing to order overpriced high-end laptops. Most of the EU is significantly more poor than the US, and you have to consider spending power when thinking about market size.

To quote a previous comment on this topic in a recent thread, though with a country not presently in the EU (but still the country with the second-highest GDP in Europe):

One example: The UK is a reasonably wealthy country. Median household income in the UK is 29,400 GBP (36,000 USD). The poorest state in the US (Mississippi) has a median household income around 43,000 USD

You brought up population, GDP, average income, etc. None of these explicitly support your claim, half of them actually work against it.

I gave you actual numbers for Linux usage and they do not support your assertion. I would have appreciated the same from you given that you are absolutely sure.

I don't get what's so hard to understand about his point. There are more people and more Linux users in Europe, but each of those people has (way) less disposable income (money left over to spend on luxury goods) than Americans.

Thus, it makes financial sense to sell to Americans first and foremost, as opposed to the more numerous Europeans.

Meadian household income isn't great for this. I know here that I don't have to pay for healthcare or schooling and I'm sure many other things in America that are deducted after income.

I responded to this elsewhere in the thread to avoid having to make a dozen comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22971567

It's not about being poor. If I already have two desktops and a laptop, why should I buy another laptop every year?

Just compare European washing machines vs USA washing machines: European models use less water and clean better because of the hot water, USA models waste water, are noisy, and finish much faster.

Or oversized gas guzzling SUVs vs European cars.

It's about not being wasteful.

Do you think that household income is a reasonable measure for disposable income? Fixed costs for a person or household tend to vary a lot based on the country/state.

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