On 3/26/02 2:35 PM, "Glenn L. Austin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I appreciate the fact that MS wanted to wait for Palm to get their act > together. However, I personally have some issues with the "market share" > numbers that are thrown around, as those are based upon number of sales per > year -- NOT the actual number of machines still in use. > > According to PC Magazine (a stalwart of Wintel mindshare), the average > lifespan of a Macintosh computer is between three and four times (!) the > average lifespan of a Wintel computer. Given that Apple has about a 5% > *sales* share, and that the machines last 3-4 times longer in actual use, > that means that the number of actual machines in use are higher than 10%, > and probably closer to 20% than the "less than 5%" that a lot of people use > for the Macintosh "market share." That 20% number jibes very closely with > the proportion of Macintosh computers that access major web sites (as > reported by web sites). The Macintosh isn't *quite* the underdog that some > people would like it to be. > > Besides, do you think that Microsoft would *really* spend all the money on > setting up the MacBU and marketing MacOffice if it wasn't extremely > profitable to them? Yeah, but let's face it. There's no way I can put Office X on the powermac 7600 that is sitting in the other room here! So, I think the market share for sales DOES reflect pretty closely how many copies of new software will be purchased. The MacBU team is very profitable to Microsoft because for only 0.5% of the MS workforce, they can generate 5% or a little more of the sales of office. The fact remains, that Mac's have very little presence in the corporate world. You don't see MS providing programs like Access for the Mac because people who use mac's probably won't use it. The demand is not there. Since the MacBU team is really rather small, it is not surprising that very little other than the main Office mainstays get developed. --Greg -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
