PC sales rise, Mac sales decline. Blame marketing? | Hacker News Reader

PC sales rise, Mac sales decline. Blame marketing?

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15 pointsilamont41 comments

PC sales rise.. they need to breakdown just what is rising there. I bet PC desktops are dead and that PC netbooks are the cause of sales rising. And why wouldn't they at $300 a pop.

Apple meanwhile is realizing the AIR is not a netbook and cursing every moment of it despite it being a slick machine. They need to get into the netbook offer and they may or may not do that, its not as if they are strapped for cash, but they don't like missing out on the limelight because that sparks trends, and the more people that get cheap netbooks and install osx on them the more they crinkle inside with anger.

iMac sales are stalling, hence the price reduction. Laptop sales are flat. The mini doesn't even count.

The only thing making Apple hotter than Jesus right now is the iPhone and App Store.

What? You think the average individual has heard of a 'netbook' or wants one?

For me yeah - I get friends/family of all ages asking about them all the time.

Here they go for 100€ if you sign up for a mobile internet connection. They are advertised in all phone shops, so most likely everybody has heard about them. And yeah, probably the sales increase comes basically from these devices.

About needing a real PC... Does the "average individual" really need one? :)

An average computer-illiterate individual might not know what a 'netbook' is but he/she can see a price tag ["I can buy a computer for $300" /think bubble].

At least two average individuals who have seen my Aspire One went out and bought one. I bet a couple more do the same soon.

Won't those netbook buyers wake up in a couple of weeks and realize that they need a real PC?

No. Netbook sales have been growing for a couple years and they're like 10% of all portable computer sales.

So folks are buying serious desktops for gaming then? Screw that 360 or ps3 experience? Or maybe they've been buying serious PCs for all those newly unemployed?

I dont know if you are trying to be comical or not, but the experience on 360 or ps3 is miserable when compared to most PC gaming, especially if you game consistently and prefer aiming over auto targeting. Very distinct from the Wii, which fits well and has its own niche.

So yes, most people who buy powerhouse computers do it either becuase they think they need to, or they really do need to to play the newest games.

I agree. I'd also add that the game industry is never given enough credit for the PC revolution. I remember back in the 80s when people started buying PCs and Apples (and others)... almost everyone I ever met said they bought them for word processing or spreadsheets, but what they actually did was play Wizardry and Castle Wolfenstein.

Doubtful. A real PC for what.. surfing on the net, checking your facebook status and twittering? You need serious CPU for that eh? Anything you want to do, you can basically do in a browser. Serious PC's are still out there, but the trending market of rising sales has not been on serious PC power its been on cheap, affordable luxury and thats come in the form of netbook.

Probably not. Most computer users today don't need anywhere near the capabilities of even a low-end PC, whether it runs Windows or OSX.

Except for the tiny screens. I agree that CPU power is not much of an issue, but it doesn't seem like fun to cope with the tiny screens for everything.

Uh, all the specs I've seen for those netbooks are basically "real PCs" from just a few years ago. Fuck the treadmill of hardware upgrades.

Who says that they don't already have a "real" PC? From what I've seen (anecdotal), many buyers are buying these netbooks explicitly as secondary machines because of the price-point/portability.

"Apple meanwhile is realizing the AIR is not a netbook and cursing every moment of it despite it being a slick machine."

I don't think so. They're pretty short-sighted, but although I didn't get the impression that the Air sold all that well, the technology that made it possible (like the SSD) are making their way into other products, and coming down in price.

You're probably right about netbooks... but I have a feeling that Apple's response to the netbook will be a souped-up iPhone rather than a trimmed laptop. Take the iPhone, throw in a bit of extra horsepower like an Atom processor and/or a few ARM processors, and make it a bit bigger, and you have an iPhoneNetBook.

Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but you get the point :)

At least for the first revision of the Air, they couldn't produce them fast enough to keep up with demand.

Hm, I'd say the Apple brand awareness is very high (at least in my country), so for me they don't fail on the marketing department.

I think it's probably just a matter of price. At least that's what used to keep me away from Apple... Until I met the hardcore fanbase. Nowadays they are the ones that keep me away from Apple. Hmm... maybe it's marketing, after all :P

Anyway, it was also important that I couldn't run key apps (read: games) in a Mac and I could on a PC. And sure, I could run Windows on a Mac, but if I'm going to use Windows (or Linux, whatever), why can't I just go for a PC and save money for something else? :)

If there was ever a time to blame your performance on the economy, this would be it. "We're expensive. Deal with it." is one of the core tenets of Apple's brand image and business strategy.

Exactly right. Apple probably thinks that losing out on some sales in the worst market with huge discounts isn't worth destroying that brand. When things recover, and people expect PC notebooks to cost $500 and macs to cost $1500, that might look very smart...

Purely a function of cost. You can get a Dell Vostro laptop for $400. The entry level Apple is double that. Even the Mac Mini, Apple's cheapest computer, is somewhat expensive based on raw specs when compared to say a Dell Inspiron desktop.

Apple's cheapest computer

Yeah, but they're clever with that too. Arguably their cheapest computer is the iPhone (depending where you are naturally).

"Arguably their cheapest computer is the iPhone"

Depending on how you account for the 2 year service agreement, maybe not.

s/iPhone/iPod Touch/, then.

I see your point but I'd argue you can't call the iPhone a computer until you can write native apps for it and install them without a license from apple.

I'm using computer in the sense of a PC/Mac like device where the user is free to write and deploy what ever apps they want on it. I'll grant you that the iPhone is computer like from the point of view of a locked down machine.

Yeah, but it's the (admittedly extreme) end of the netbook spectrum - people that want to do light surfing and check their email on the couch.

Probably why the tablet rumours makes some kind sense to me. It's a good niche and slots into their range, and they're not competing with the cheap-as-possible netbook market.

If you are capable of writing a native app for the iPhone, you are probably capable of jailbreaking it too.

not legally.

I'd need to double check the license agreement about whether compiling others distributed code for your personal use is kosher. However, if you pay the $100, you get the all-important signing key to put any app on you and your 99 best friends' Iphones.

I blame the recession and rise of netbooks. Apple does not have any netbooks out in the market. Also with a recession going on people are not going to be forking out big bucks for a mac when they can get a PC much cheaper even if they do like the mac better. I wouldn't say its marketing MS new ads might be cute but they are not making me want a PC.

I'm still a PC user and buyer - ducks ;)

Although a lot of my colleagues and friends have moved over to the Mac, I'm still a PC user. I've heard all the great things about the Mac - one of my buddies has been a lifelong die hard Mac user who goes ape shit on me about my PC usage(in a fun loving way), but I still have not made the switch.

Anyhow, last month I ordered and purchased a super souped up Sager notebook (I had one previously that I really liked too) for about 1/2 the cost of a similar Mac setup and it includes the latest Nvidia 9800 GTX video card. I was very very close to getting the Mac book pro, but went with what I knew. Yes, I can run windows/PC apps on the Mac, but preferred going with my comfortable setup and development environment that I have been using for what seems like forever.

Personally I think marketing is to blame but it's not the kind this article mentions. I've been wanting to buy something from Apple to replace my PPC powerbook G4 for a few years now but what I have works and unfortunately Apple's marketing department hasn't come up with anything I would rather have. Sometimes I've been tempted to get a "new" G4 just because with all the wear and tear my laptop's case is getting a little shabby.

Leave it to the trade press to construct a trend story out of a single data point.

Are there any numbers that do comparisons with on price (i.e., above and below $1000)? Unit numbers are not so interesting. It's like trying to compare sales at Wal-Mart and Nordstrom.

Macbooks aren't that much more expensive than their pc counterparts. The white one is more expensive, but the macbook pro is fairly on par with similar offerings from pc manufacturers.

? _macbook pro on par with similar offerings?_ which ones?, not the Lenovo's Dell's or Sony's IMHO

Apple isn't a computer company. They're an mp3 player company that also makes computers as a side business.

"There's a spirit of entrepreneurship that many Americans associate with Windows and Microsoft. The recession is bringing it out."

I find this explanation absolutely farcical.

I think there's a spirit of something else that many people associate with Windows and Microsoft, and it's not entrepreneurship.

Propaganda. Move along.

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