Joshua Marinacci wrote: >> >>>> >>>>> >>> >>> While it is a simplification, I think it holds a truism. With clever >>> use of brand building over a very long period of time colas are not a >>> commodity market the way that, say, sugar and flour are, even though >>> it easily could be. >>> >> This says it quicker (and better) than I could. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry#cite_note-about-0 > > Indeed. My point is that in Colas they have created a barrier to entry > through branding, product innovation (somewhat), and creative product > placement, not through patents or having non-reproducible technology. > Is this something that computer companies (other than Apple) can do? > Or are they simply destined to be indistinguishable and therefore > profit margins will eventually erode to a tiny bit above zero?
Numbers for market share 2008 (US only as far as I can tell). 1. HP 20.8% 2. Dell 15.1% 3. Acer 14.6% 4. Toshiba 9.3% 5. Lenovo 7.5% 6. Fujitsu-Siemens 5.2% 7. Apple 4.6% 8. Asus 4.3% 9. Sony 4.2% 10. Others 14.5% According to the NDP US market share in first quarter of 2008 was 13.8% Apple. They also state that Apple essentially owns the above $1000 market accounting for 66% of all high end sales in the first quarter of 2008. I found a lot of older reports that suggest HP and Dell have pretty much dominated the market with both companies at the top of the heap at one time or another. Acer has been steadily growing. So with a little hand waving here (not actually counting the number of models at various price points), HP/Dell both push many more models than any of the others in the list (except maybe Others ;-)). So this chart seems to suggest that computer manufacturers offer something akin to breakfast cereal. If you want greater market share, you offer more types of the same thing at different price points. I think you can thank/blame MS for the homogenization in this market. If you want to ship with Windows, you need to build to the MS specification. Even machines shipped with Linux are built to the MS specification. This makes it very difficult to differentiate so one can only sell on price. The only company on the list that won't build to that specification is (of course) Apple. I would guess that their 7th place ranking is higher than their limited number of laptop offerings would give them in a perfectly balanced cereal market. From a world perspective (and I'm happy for help here) I believe that the best branded companies in the list are; HP and Sony. While HP has been able to cash in on the strong branding, Sony doesn't seem to have been able to. IMHO, the reason is quite simple, Sony is trying to sell into Apple's market but with hardware/OS that puts it into firmly HP/Dells market. So it's a more expensive brand of Corn Flakes. At the end of the day, a Mac may still be Corn Flakes but because it hasn't been so homogenized by needing to follow the crowd, it's like puffy Corn Flakes or something else that separates its or makes it seem different. I would suggest that as long as a single company gets to dictate what machines need to look like, it will be very difficult for companies to strongly differentiate. Kirk http://www.digitalburn.com/index.php/2008/06/10/hp-dell-rule-notebook-market-for-q1-2008/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
