Showing posts with label PC demand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PC demand. Show all posts

Thursday, January 10, 2008

What's Good for Suppliers Also Good for You?


If you casually stroll past displays of PCs on the shelves of any electronics retailer, you'll see at least a few notebooks preconfigured for one brand of wireless data card access. Now, in one sense this is the same strategy used when software comes preloaded on your brand-new machine. Dial-up Internet access services, anti-virus, firewall and security, media players, browsers, games and so forth provide examples.

In the same vein, there has been an argument that the notebook screen represents real estate that a provider's icon must occupy to get more usage or attention. Up to a point there's a clear logic to such thinking.

But there's some point at which the strategy breaks down. Lots of machines sport RJ-11 connections for dial-up Internet access. I don't know how many of you think that's a "feature" instead of a "bug" anymore, but it's clearly not an important feature for many.

The point is that USB and Ethernet ports, like RJ-11 ports, are general purpose computing capabilities. They don't lock anybody into a continuing commercial relationship with any single provider. The user has choice.

Providing that a new notebook has sufficient hard disk capacity, most users probably just ignore all that preloaded software and most of the offers. Norton might disagree, of course, and that might be one of the salient exceptions. Others of us have to spend some time removing all the unwanted software from the machine or at least disabling their ability to start up automatically.

Suppliers might think otherwise, but the incremental cost of preconfiguring a PC for one flavor of 3G data card access probably outweighs everything but the revenue the manufacturer gets from the service provider for preloading the software.

Most people don't seem to have any problem buying a card when they want to use wireless broadband services. To be sure, there might be some instances where a particular buyer of a particular model actually wants to buy wireless broadband from the precise supplier whose access software is preloaded on that machine. But not very often.

Perhaps an argument can be made that the revenue gotten by the PC manufacturer from such deals helps in some small way to control the overall cost of the device. In that sense, there is a consumer benefit. So maybe this is the PC equivalent of advertising. Users might not "like" it, or "want it," but it might help lower the cost of acquiring and using something else (their PC).

Still, it's hard to imagine that preloading broadband wireless for a single provider can be done on a wide-enough scale to produce incrementally-significant customer additions.

The way this could work, though, is to do the reverse: sell a cheap device that actually is configured to use one broadband access provider. Consumers can do the math. If the value of getting a general-purpose computing device is low enough, and the price is lock in to one broadband access supplier, some buyers will do so.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Apple to Gain Share


Apple's Macintosh computers are poised to make sizable market share gains in the coming months, according to ChangeWave Research.

ChangeWave says it sees continuing momentum for Apple's Macs among both consumer and business customers.

ChangeWave recently conducted two surveys that gauged PC-buying plans over the next 90 days, a period running from the holiday shopping season into first-quarter 2008. It polled members, who tend to be more tech-savvy and have higher disposable incomes than the general public.

The latest poll found that 29 percent of likely notebook and desktop PC buyers in the next 90 days are planning to get a Mac. That's higher than consumer purchase intent for HP laptops (21 percent), HP desktops (24 percent) and Dell laptops (28 percent).

Two years ago, 16 percent of likely notebook PC buyers and 11 percent of desktop PC buyers planned to buy Macs. Demand for Macs has risen steadily ever since.

More consumers are buying Macs because they're turned off by PCs using Microsoft's Windows operating system, Changewave analysts say.

A separate ChangeWave poll of corporate PC buyers found increasing demand for Apple as well. For companies planning to buy computers next quarter, seven percent of laptop buyers and six percent of desktop buyers plan to get Macs. That's up from four percent of laptop buyers and three percent of desktop buyers two years ago.

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