@Kol. Panic: and the MS hegemony on the office desktop will be obviously hard to break ... Even with that success, their market share hasn't grown much, and there are other threats to that market
I'm not sure it matters. Market share is a not a destination onto itself. The important thing to users is that they can get ongoing updates to hardware and software and find good applications. The important thing to investors is returns. Mac hardware generates plenty of revenue, and the software/hardware integration works better for consumers.
So while more influence is always better, I personally don't see the advantage (as distant and theoretical as it may be) in abandoning hardware just to chase market share. You can have 20% market share, but does it matter if the product isn't what you want it to be and the total revenue isn't as high?
In terms of the enterprise/office, I don't think there's nearly as much promise in that area as there is in the consumer market. Open source platforms do just fine there. Apple's value is much more apparent to small businesses and individuals than huge, sweeping organizations filled with layers upon layers of management. Microsoft's culture, on the other hand, is built around that sort of situation.
TV might evolve into a nice gaming deck in the future, with another nice revenue stream from game sales via iTunes
I'm not sure. That's a very different kind of business. It's all about fostering solid first-party content, not hardware or OS design. It's not even much like iTunes, where you just resell media. There's real money in both enterprise software and video games, but I'm just not sure either are a good fit for Apple, specifically.
Remember the week before WWDC '05, when all the pundits where saying the Intel transition would never happen?
True enough.
by Scott Stevenson — Jan 26
I'm not sure it matters. Market share is a not a destination onto itself. The important thing to users is that they can get ongoing updates to hardware and software and find good applications. The important thing to investors is returns. Mac hardware generates plenty of revenue, and the software/hardware integration works better for consumers.
So while more influence is always better, I personally don't see the advantage (as distant and theoretical as it may be) in abandoning hardware just to chase market share. You can have 20% market share, but does it matter if the product isn't what you want it to be and the total revenue isn't as high?
In terms of the enterprise/office, I don't think there's nearly as much promise in that area as there is in the consumer market. Open source platforms do just fine there. Apple's value is much more apparent to small businesses and individuals than huge, sweeping organizations filled with layers upon layers of management. Microsoft's culture, on the other hand, is built around that sort of situation.
TV might evolve into a nice gaming deck in the future, with another nice revenue stream from game sales via iTunes
I'm not sure. That's a very different kind of business. It's all about fostering solid first-party content, not hardware or OS design. It's not even much like iTunes, where you just resell media. There's real money in both enterprise software and video games, but I'm just not sure either are a good fit for Apple, specifically.
Remember the week before WWDC '05, when all the pundits where saying the Intel transition would never happen?
True enough.