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Re: Apple Accelerates: New Guts, New Shells, Lower Prices?
Posted by: Chris Maxcer 2009-05-01 06:33:00
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While Apple CEO Steve Jobs might be resting at -- or working from -- home, that doesn't appear to have stopped the company from pushing forward. New reports from the Apple-focused blogosphere suggest that Apple is hiring new microprocessor engineers and architects, considering carbon fiber for new device casings, and possibly even working out plans to offer new, lower-priced, entry-level Macs. Wall Street Journal and Forbes stories detailing Apple's latest hiring efforts hit the presses this week.
In the inimitable (paraphrased) words of Sunny Bonnell:
When you buy a Mac, you're buying the lifestyle;
when you buy a PC, you're just buying another indistinguishable PC.
When you buy a Mac, you're buying the lifestyle;
when you buy a PC, you're just buying another indistinguishable PC.
My company is the fastest growing in the new filed of price optimization, so I have some experience in these matters.
Apple have done a spectacular job of taking a commodity product, add value and charge premium dollar - all while keeping their customer happier then any other computer/cell phone vendor. It would be a terrible mistake for them to lower their prices to play in the Dell sandbox. Just look at the numbers - Dell's margin is around 5%; Apple's around 30%. Dell is valued at about 1/3d of its revenue; Apple is valued at 3 times its revenue.
So the right answer here is for Apple to continue to add value to their product and not lower the price. In terms of an Apple "net-book", it will deflect the value they manage to create, and the right answer is possible a device that fit the netbook functionality, but executing it in a different way (call it instead a mega iPhone)
I'm writing about this matter quite frequently on my blog:
http://bestpracticepricing.blogspot.com/
Apple have done a spectacular job of taking a commodity product, add value and charge premium dollar - all while keeping their customer happier then any other computer/cell phone vendor. It would be a terrible mistake for them to lower their prices to play in the Dell sandbox. Just look at the numbers - Dell's margin is around 5%; Apple's around 30%. Dell is valued at about 1/3d of its revenue; Apple is valued at 3 times its revenue.
So the right answer here is for Apple to continue to add value to their product and not lower the price. In terms of an Apple "net-book", it will deflect the value they manage to create, and the right answer is possible a device that fit the netbook functionality, but executing it in a different way (call it instead a mega iPhone)
I'm writing about this matter quite frequently on my blog:
http://bestpracticepricing.blogspot.com/
