[OT] Marketing and market share (was PowerBook sighting!)

[Michael Bigley]

>I guess then that one could conclude that this has no effect whatsoever on
>the market side of things, else how do you account for Apple's miniscule
>market share?

One of the things Jobs did on returning to Apple was to eliminate 
"Market share marketing". When you dominate the market, you can use 
market share, but Apple, like Netscape, lost that war with Microsoft. 
It is over, done, finito. Apple is a niche player and is now doing an 
excellent job at being that.

The whole "Think Different" campaign was a foundation for redefining 
that niche.  They had to do that because during their "dark period" 
of the mid-90s, the existing niches (graphics, publishing, education) 
was greatly diminished, with Windows taking anywhere from 30 to 55 
percent of those markets. While Apple still has a commanding lead in 
some of those niche areas, they no longer "own them", as they once 
did.

The new niche is really "anyone" who thinks differently, in that they 
prefer quality over quantity; ease of use over status quo. Enter 
phase 2, the Switch campaign.

The result is, Apple's niche is now more broad-based...like Honda's 
share of the auto market (which is actually lower than Apple's share 
of computers)

That being said, there is a lot of "smoke and mirrors" surrounding 
market share as well. The fact is there is no unbiased organization 
producing accurate market share data.  Regardless of the number, 
Apple achieves growth through growth of the computer market as a 
whole.

Bottom line is, judge success or lack thereof, by sales and profits. 
Apple as been very successful by those standards.

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Mike Bigley                Maineville, Ohio
       http://www.norbertrunning.com
Please support an American Indian Elder &
Medicine Man by visiting the above link.
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