Apple's International Image
Apple's International Image
- Subject: Apple's International Image
- From: Karan Misra <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 01:10:24 +0530
Subject: Apple's International Image - the 1% market share
Dear friends,
For this discussion I'd like to invite people living outside the USA
where the Mac market share is not even 3% but is rather close to 1% by
recent estimates from CNet News.com.
Mac users outside USA and Canada have much less to gain when they use
the Mac OS, especially home users. Now, some of us, when I tell them
about the disadvantages to the common man owning a Mac, will tell me
that the Mac is best suited for graphics professionals. They will not
listen when I try to point out that Apple is aiming at home users with
the 'i' line of hardware and software.
If you live in the US, great, because even if you don't have an Apple
Store in your city, you have plenty of Mac dealers around and the next
Apple Store may be opening in your city or state.
Let's skip Canada, UK and most parts of Europe now because although
there are no Apple Stores there made of brick and walls, there are
online Apple Stores for these countries from which people can order
whatever they like. Let us focus on places like the Middle-East (forget
about the Iraq crisis for a while), South Asia and South-East Asia. In
these countries, the Apple market share drops to less than half a
percent and in some countries, you could count the number of Mac users
off your fingers.
These are the places where the Mac dealers are scarce, there is hardly
any online presence and the market share is negligible. Therefore, it
would not come as a surprise if Mac software was a nonentity in such
places. Let me point you to where I live currently, and that is in
India. I live in the capital city of New Delhi and we have 4 dealers
here in total. The one closest to my house and may be the largest spans
just over 200 square feet in area, there are no Macs on display except
the ones that the staff use and these are no newer than 1998 iMacs.
Also, the last Apple Ad aired on TV before I was born (in 1987).
Now, in USA, people may have heard of Macs and may have misconceptions
about them that you can clear either by telling them the realities or
by pointing them to www.apple.com/myths but here, first you have to
tell them what a Mac is? Mac OS X is something they will not even hear
of for the next ten years and the last Mac system one of the ISPs here
supported was version 6. Macs here cost a lot more than they do in the
USA. When the iMac was selling in US for $1300, it sold here for $1900.
You can guess how much Power Macs must be costing. That's why even the
few and far graphics pros that do use Macs here purchase iMacs which
cost as much as professional desktops.
In addition, you wait for at-least 6 months for an Apple product to
appear here after it starts shipping in the US. Now, I was talking
about India. The situation is comparatively better or worse in other
countries. The prices are lower in the Middle-East where the Import Tax
or Duty is not as high and you can get Macs for about $300 more than
their US prices as compared to $600 in India. But the other situation
about software and support remains the same.
Now, the big question would be as to "why someone would like to live
with a Mac in such places?". I'm afraid here, ease of use is not enough
to persuade most of the crowd to even have a look at another platform
with the disadvantages of owning such a machine outweighing the
advantages. Here, Mac dealers or users can only make a limited effort
on calling people to our platform of choice and if any difference has
to be made it has to be by the company behind all this. Microsoft,
Dell, Compaq, Toshiba, IBM, Sun Microsystems are some of the companies
that have a very strong influence on the Indian tech market and they do
this by asserting their presence, advertising and building stores and
chains of resellers.
If there is any Apple employee reading this who thinks he can make
something happen should heed my advice: Asian countries have far from
saturated markets unlike USA (where it is basically impossible to sell
computers anymore because of the economy and the saturated market) and
there is huge scope for investments here considering that most of
Apple's revenue comes from "abroad".
Would appreciate if other Mac users would share their opinion on the
same.
Karan Misra
Mac OS X Mac User Group (MXMUG)
AIM/iChat: kkcorporation
Homepage: www.karanmisra.com
_______________________________________________
augd mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/augd
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.