[Ti] MAC commercial ... The truth??? You decide...

[b]

According to Massimo Marino:

>Must be your opinion certainly but you must be living in a niche 
>environment or on such an extreme fringe of the distribution to be 
>claiming such a thing. TiBook is the best selling (all brands) 
>laptop since long time, Macs sell more then even before, the latest 
>market rate is increasing and over 3%, more and more major sw 
>producers are coming out with OS X product. Some late comers (Quark) 
>finally came out with the OS X version.

I left out a lot of your informed response, but it was a good read.

In this whole issue of installed bases and market share, it might be 
interesting to note that the sales of Intel chips [long regarded as a 
bellwether of the PC industry and corporate buying of tech, etc] have 
maintained high numbers over the 90s and the last few years.

However, at the height of the Internet/dotcom/Corporate tech 
investment boom [also known as the 'bubble] 27% of Intel's revenues 
were considered to be 'replacement' sales. In other words, given an 
average lifespan of 4 years for a PC [industry US corporate average], 
each year about 1/4 of the sales of Intel Pentiums were NOT new sales 
in the strictest sense. Still, the balance of the revenues did 
represent new sales, and were astonishing evidence of corporation's 
huge investment in tech.

BUT, nowadays, after the huge slowdown in tech expansion, if one 
looks at the total installed base of PCs, and keeps the four-year 
lifespan in mind, Intel's TOTAL sales equal almost exactly 25% of the 
installed base. What this means is that the PC market, not 'share', 
is not growing at all. On the one hand, Intel is doing fine. But if 
the market seizes to expand, and Intel's PC chip sales become a 
simple reflection of 'replacement' of previously installed PCs, that 
bodes not so well for MS, and the market, as a whole. 
"Growth'-oriented investors [i.e. those responsible for the sky-high 
'evaluations of NASDAQ, and tech stocks, in general], perceived this. 
And we see what the result has been.

Market 'share' is only one part of the equation. The 'nature' of the 
Market [i.e. 'expanding', 'contracting', etc] is of equal, or greater 
importance. This explains why the competition in the Server market 
will become more and more vicious, and the issues, such as security 
of data, and even geopolitical perceptions of the players [i.e. 
Microsoft and their US Justice Dep't buddies], abroad, will take on 
increasing relevance.

It should get interesting.

~flipper