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Apple Laptop Market Share Ping!
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Posted on 02/24/2011 3:52:48 AM PST by Swordmaker
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Hewlett-Packard (HPQ_) Tuesday night reported a 12% decline in the "consumer" portion of its personal systems group. That's mostly laptops. With this news fresh in mind, I decided to visit 15 of the cafes located closest to the HP headquarters, mostly within a 2-mile radius, to see what the people closest to HP were using in terms of laptops.The survey took me about 90 minutes to conduct, and is, of course, of limited statistical significance. But still, out of the 100 laptops and tablets observed in 15 of the cafes closest to the HP headquarters:
Aside from its statistical limitations, one can, of course, criticize this kind of quick survey from other angles, such as enterprise-vs.-consumer, HP employees or owners don't visit cafes, or don't visit cafes located down the street from HP, or whatever. That said, based on the kind of publicly reported market shares, in which Apple(AAPL_) normally scores not too far from 10% and is in a similar category to HP, this kind of quick survey looks like a nasty leading indicator for HP in the laptop sales department.
Why is Apple outselling HP, as well as everyone else, in the laptop category? It's not because of price, because most people can tell that Apple laptops generally start as high as two times that of HP and other laptops. No, people are willing to pay more for Apple laptops as a result of the superior shopping experience in the Apple store, the superior service at the Genius Bar, the easier-to-use services such as iTunes and TimeMachine. Of course, most people know that Apple's actual hardware product design leads the pack by a significant margin.
I decided to visit the largest electronics store located closest to HP's headquarters, within walking distance, called Fry's. It offered numerous HP and other laptops with terrible merchandising, including no Internet connectivity, no batteries, and often missing or incorrect price tags or spec sheets. Product names were incomprehensible and bewildering, such as "XYZ-1200s PQ/55-T" or something similar. Looking at the salespeople and the service desk, I felt like I was about to negotiate the price of a hand-knotted rug on a Sunday bazaar in Damascus. If I were in the market for a laptop today, there is no doubt the deal would happen at the Apple store, and not here.
With Apple clobbering the competition -- HP in particular -- in the laptop department, what's next on the horizon? Let me suggest that laptops built on the Google(GOOG_) Chrome OS are likely to take the market by storm, starting this summer and accelerating into 2012. The first Google Chrome OS laptop, which I have had since early December, is superior to its competition in many respects, especially considering that it would probably sell for $299 (my guess). It boots four times as fast as my MacBook Pro and has zero software complications of any kind. In other words, it's basically a maintenance-free laptop, which will likely be sold for the same price ($300) as a comprehensive three-year warranty for a Windows or Mac laptop. With Google Chrome OS, parents and corporate IT administrators would need less time to help children, employees and the elderly fix their PCs.
Apple is eating HP's laptop lunch right now, but with the Google Chrome OS laptops -- built by Acer, Samsung and potentially others -- hitting the market this summer at superior prices and lower cost of ownership, everyone including Apple has reason to worry a lot. Google Chrome OS may just end up the technology story of the year, and nobody is talking about it yet.
At the time of submitting this article, Wahlman was long AAPL and GOOG.
This commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet guest contributor program. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of TheStreet or its management.
Anton Wahlman was a sell-side equity research analyst covering the communications technology industries from 1996 to 2008: UBS 1996-2002, Needham & Company 2002-2006, and ThinkEquity 2006-2008.
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Sell msft and appl ...
So what? For those who use a laptop as a very large PDA or DVD player, that is just wonderful. Let’s try something like SolidWorks or Solid Edge and see how they perform, not. Its not about platform but what you need to do with it.
Does this whole world need to be on this kick about my orange is better than your peach? To me it is getting the right tool for the job. Who cares if it is Snap-On or Matco?
No bias in this article, nope.
The Rainbow Quichery.
Super.
LLS
In CA, I would expect an abundance of Apple, and more iPads.
In Houston, near the old Compaq area, I would expect lots of HP.
Austin TX has lots of Dell but lots of Apple.
Is the HP HQ near a university or corporate America?
The author is right about one thing. If you go into Best Buy, at the Apple display .....all Apple computers and laptops have internet connectivity which is useful for test driving any computer. I can immediately sort out HP laptops and others as far specs and price but I can see how this dufus (who was a tech stock analyst) and others might be confused
Demo of the forthcoming HP Touchpad with their webOS platform. Looks pretty sweet to me....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKCZZLjEB8k&feature=fvsr
I think the point is that the dynamics of the computer world are changing. I avoid Google because they make no pretense of protecting your information, but there are a lot of people who will snap up a Chrome laptop at the prices he's discussing. There is significant downward pressure on software prices right now, which will not be good for MS.
Interesting that you pick the two most expensive tool companies. I think this article is more like comparing Snap-On to Craftsman. I like Snap-on tools but I can get something very much like it in Craftsman for about a third the price - just like the Apple/Generic laptop difference.
Articles like this are a waste of bandwidth and an annoyance to people who want real facts.
There's a lot of the trivial in the mac base, which is a shame, because the mac laptops are a fine product and don't need crap like this to sell.
Seems like Apples are the choice of the cafe class
Actually, I paid almost $2,000 for my 17" MacBook Pro three years ago. I just sold it, used, for $945 when I bought my new $2,300 17" MacBook Pro in January. Do HP notebooks keep value like that? I don't know.
I use the 17" because I edit video and produce 2D animation.
I went Mac three years go, after thinking that all Mac users were leftist heretics. Now, I'll run Windows, as long as it's on my Mac. For me and for my family - and I'm saying for me and my family - Mac simply works. In three years, this family of five has become believers (including the Georgia Tech grad daughter who didn't want a Mac because she thought only stuck-up kids had Macs; after using them for about nine months when she visited home, she caved in).
I think a better place to do such a study is in an airport. Hover near the security area, and see what people run through.
For those who complain about what the Macs cost, it might well be worth it if you spend a lot of time doing work on your machine. Let’s take the $1,600 MacBook Pro mentioned above. You can pay a LOT more for that for the high end version of just the Adobe Creative Suite, or Autodesk’s products, or any number of vertical applications. Heck, some people will pay that just to add a high-end SSD and graphics upgrade to a base desktop unit.
Over the course of a three-year cycle, the daily cost of a good computer is miniscule.
Many folks that I know who use PCs wouldn't switch to Apple because they already know what they know and they don't want to relearn.
If one company focuses on production software and the other on fun, guess which will win out.
The only problem I have with this is trying to figure out why someone would take a computer to a cafe anyway?
If you’re working, then why not stay somewhere you can be focused and have all your resources at your fingertips.
If you’re not working then why go to a public place to do an inherently private (working on a computer) activity.
Unless of course the reason to go to the cafe is just to be seen. In which case the brand statistics make perfect sense.
Or have Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Word, Excel, Outlook, IE, FF, Safari, a chat program, Anti-Virus, Firewall, and WebLogic (web server) all running at the same time. I have a Mac Book Pro, and it can't handle that load. Only the HP 6530b I have can handle it without issue. When you need to WORK, get a PC.
I bought a macbook pro two months ago. It is a well designed machine that has many commonsense features not found on many laptops. But, this keyboard still irritates me as does the price of some accessories. $50 for a plastic cover that costs $2 to make???
The Word (2011) software was the big surprise. With its editing and review features, Windows is superior. I’m glad I held on to my Fujitsu LT. At a certain point in my writing, I will have to put this MBP on the shelf.
If any of you know that I’m missing something, please advise me.
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