If the IT market falls, it will remain above the pre-covid years. While the Windows-dependent brands all fell back, Apple and its Macs recorded a very strong rise. She places them just at the foot of the podium, behind Dell. But with much higher margins.
The PC market has fallen again for the third consecutive quarter. After a period of incarceration around the world in connection with the so-called Covid pandemic, purchases are logically slowing down. With no real concern that said, sales volumes are still ahead of the pre-pandemic period and migration forecasts of professional computing devices (Windows 11, Core or 12e generation, etc.) should be better in 2023.
However, the current decline brings a lesson to the Windows PC market: Microsoft and its ecosystem are underperforming. Where does such a statement come from? A parallel with the Apple Mac market. When the top four PC brands dropped from -7.8% (Asus) to -27.8%, Apple saw its volumes increase by 40%! Enable him the 3 . to approache instead of Dell, which ships 11.96 million machines against 10.06 for Apple. But the latter makes incredibly higher margins than any of its rivals in the Windows world, offering only so-called premium…
Multi-factor decline where Apple readability pays off
Apple is Apple and no one can imitate the image of another brand. Nevertheless, some objective elements should encourage companies to think about the attachment consumers have to Apple. And in the first place the legibility of the computer offer. While there are clearly power, RAM and storage variants, the Apple range remains incredibly clear, and this is even more true of Apple Silicon chips for Mac: the MacBook Air for ultra-mobility, MacBook Pro for power on the go, theiMac like a family computer in the living room, the mac mini as small desktop tinkering and mac studio for intensive multimedia tasks. A clear and effective range. And above all, incredibly cheaper to design and maintain than the thousand branches of the PC series.
Because running the same synthesis exercise at Dell, which sells roughly the number of machines, would take much longer. With many more references, assortments, etc. For much lower margins! And if we look at the case of Asian players, such as Asus or Lenovo, the details of the ranges would literally take up an entire A4 page! This difficulty in reading the scales, this multiplication of models (and variations!) is bad. It is both a brake on profitability, but also a blurring of the traces of what the brands really are. The MacBook defines Apple, but what defines HP vs Lenovo in people’s minds?
If we know that the market is cyclical and that the nature of the buyers – companies, individuals, administrations, etc. – conditions these cycles, the breakthrough of Apple and its model (its operating system, its chips, some series) could – or should! – give some ideas to Windows IT players. Actors we, tech journalists, find it difficult to follow in their tsunami of series…
IDC