A combination of the poor economy and Microsoft’s advertising has put fresh focus, rightly or wrongly on the relative value of Apple’s hardware. Long time mac users know that while Apple doesn’t sell low end, cheaper products, the machines it does sell are generally good value for the price. Unfortunately not everyone is wise enough to see through Microsoft’s marketing, and some, just don’t have the budgets to buy what they perceive as a more expensive machine, whatever the value. At the end of the day, Apple has done remarkably well in the current climate, and any effect of Microsoft’s advertising might take some time to fully quantify. It more than likely will have little impact, as the audience Microsoft seems to be targeting were unlikely to buy a mac anyway. But it does pose an interesting question: what would happen if Apple did introduce significantly cheaper Macs ?
There’s is nothing to stop the company releasing cut down notebooks or desktop machines other than the fact that they don’t want to. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about making the existing line cheaper, but coming out with cheaper entry level products. They could create a cut priced line with lower margins and slightly less specs, just like many PC manufacturers do. I know for many Apple fans this is heresy, right up there with mac clones in the grand list of things “Jobs would never do”. It certainly doesn’t need to, but what if Apple did? Microsoft’s whole marketing message at the moment is that it’s the economy option. It has effectively abandoned the premium market, and Microsoft has no control over what other the actual sale of PC hardware, so if Apple called their bluff, they’d have no where else to go and would not be able to respond because they only control one cog in the PC wheel.
Of course, Apple will more than likely never go down this route, but then you never know. There was a time when they were “never” going to do video on an iPod, and they were “absolutely not” working on an iPod Phone. If Apple thought they could make money on a lower end machine I think they’d go for it in a heart beat, and if they did Microsoft would be in a full on panic, not to mention other PC manufacturers. In fact, companies like Dell would bear the brunt of a any move into the low end by Apple. Their margins are so low, that even a couple of percentage points drop in market share could have a serious knock on effect on their business. But like I said, it will probably never happen.
Probably.
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