I know the stock is an investor darling, trading near its all-time high.
And I know the company's products have tremendous consumer cachet -- so much so that the company is able to sell its iPhones and iMacs for prices well above those charged by competitors.
But it still looks to me that Apple (AAPL, news, msgs) has missed its chance. It had a limited window of opportunity when competitors such as Microsoft (MSFT, news, msgs) couldn't do anything right, and it didn't turn that opening into a significant share of the personal-computer market. It was first to market with a game-changing smart phone, but the company has pursued a high-end niche strategy with the iPhone that has left the door wide open for Google (GOOG, news, msgs) to grab for the mass market. (Microsoft publishes MSN Money.)
If this is as good as it gets for Apple, the company has no one to blame but itself. The opportunity was there, and Apple didn't exploit it as ruthlessly or as relentlessly as it needed to.
How competitors stumbled
Here's my basic problem with Apple's strategy and execution: The company had 'em down and didn't kick 'em hard enough.A major competitor, Microsoft, produced a stink bomb of an operating system. Windows Vista was so terrible that 80% of the companies running Microsoft's aging predecessor operating system, Windows XP, chose not to upgrade. And while Microsoft was busy issuing embarrassing security patch after security patch, Apple was rolling out elegant version (Leopard in October 2007) after version (Snow Leopard in August 2009) of its operating system.
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And what happened to Apple's market share for personal computers while Microsoft was busy shooting itself in both feet and every other appendage it could aim a marketing message at? And while PC makers couldn't come up with anything more revolutionary than the idea that computers could come in colors instead of just Dell gray?
Well, Apple did reverse a decline that had its personal computers headed from niche product to museum curiosity. Yes, Apple has always held that market share didn't matter as much as profitability, but that attitude seemed increasingly like a defensive self-justification as its market share bottomed near 3%.
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Apple's revival has been remarkable. Today, depending on which market research company you believe, Apple has somewhere between 7.6% and 8.7% of the market for personal computers. The company is either No. 4 behind Acer (ACEIF, news, msgs) or No. 5 behind Toshiba (TOSBF, news, msgs).
No. 4 or No. 5? That's all that you get from the competitive opportunity of several lifetimes?
Counteroffensive is just getting started
Shouldn't Apple have been more aggressive about changing the game while its opponents were curled up in the fetal position? Wasn't the goal, after all, global domination and not just ego-gratifying revival meetings of the faithful?You think I'm kidding? You say Apple didn't need to wipe the floor with the competition? You say that Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn't need to turn Microsoft into a Harvard Business School case study in how a company could squander market dominance?
I think you're dead wrong. Because the counteroffensive is just beginning, and it's going to be fierce.
First, Windows 7 will remove some of the marketing stigma from the PC.
Microsoft and the rest of the PC industry don't have to persuade core Mac enthusiasts to give up their beautiful machines with their great operating systems. (Hey, I work on both PCs and Macs, and I know -- I feel -- the difference.) Those folks won't give up their Macs until Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pries them from their cold, dead fingers.
But remember, we know from the bad old days that these Mac die-hards are only enough to give Apple a 5% or so market share.
Continued: The smart-phone battleground
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