Following-up on our note yesterday about drastic Apple price cuts, c|net also notes that Apple's inventory backlog has increased slightly from 11 weeks to 11.5 weeks. The report also quotes PC Data's preliminary retail-sales data, which show that for the first half of December Apple sales plummeted 40 percent compared with a 20 percent decline in PC sales during the same period.
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I wonder if maybe the downturn in all personal computer sales is that we've got quite good machines at the moment which we're generally happy with - and I include Windows users.
I've had my 400Mhz iMac DV since Jan last year - I don't need anything new - though I'd like an iBook, G4 etc etc. I think it is powerful enough to run most applications for the next year or so - why should I upgrade?
Just a thought.
Analysts seem to think Apple is selling some product fundamentally different than a personal computer. Apple sells computers, DELL and Gateway sell computers too.
I am mystified that Apple is held out in front as some separate classification. Averages of the entire PeeCee industry bring down the numbers, but I am sure individual companies had similarly poor sales figures when taken by themselves.
Also most pro Mac users know that MacWorld = new products so they hold of purchases unless they really need them.
I'd rather wait a few weeks for a 650 Mhz Dual G4 for the same price as a Dual 500 any day.
Its common knowledge that Macs are more expensive than competitor products. I know of some now-pc-wanna-be-future-mac-users that withdrew their decision to buy a cool G4 Cube (not the funky-candy colored out-of-fashion iMac) simply becoz it wasn't worth the money. If Apple wants to continue to introduce new products that sells becoz the "ooh-ahh" factor is within reach, they must make sure that consumers are convinced that the price they pay matches the satisfaction they get in owning a Mac. I'm a strong believer that most Mac users will not want to use any other computer ever after. Can Apple make the Mac more accessible at all levels of the product line? This massive price cut is an obvious act of desperation. It could have been avoided and more discrete if prices were set lower iniitally.
I'm typing this on my new (2 week old) PB 400 which i got for $2298 from outpost. minus the 200 dollar rebate= $2098, that came with 128 megs and a leather case that aint as crappy as I thought it would be(actually it's pretty nice), i think that i'll be cruising on this bad boy for @ least 2 years. like my B&W G3 400 from 2 years ago(which cooks even today for the hardest tasks like preparing print promos and websites, graphics, corp id and logo designs, video sequencing and stop motion animation). i'm telling you, Apple is going to do just fine. the stuff they make really is solid. this is my fifth or sixth mac in 8 years and i have never had a disaster issue. only one when my friend dropped a chocolate shake on my duo 2300c in college and that just needed a new kbd.
Kinda strange, all this talk about huge unsold inventories and price-cut panics at Apple, when you can visit the Apple (UK) store online to be told that you can't have a dual 500 G4 because they're not available. Neither can I buy their "ultimate" package -- the dual G4 plus Cinema display -- because that's unavailable too.
Apple touted its tight 5 day inventory and only manufacturing as needed. Then it went from 11 wks inventory before the holiday season, to 1/2 wk more. In the past, Apple use to have $1B in backlog and still not have what users want.
I'll guess that a lot of the "improvements" in Apple were put in place before Jobs, not as a result of. Even buying NeXT.
Same olde Apple then isn't it? They should know. But don't. They see this every MacWorld like last summer. Whose the scapegoat this time, rumor sites?
Apple would have to cut deeper. The G4/400 has been selling NEW since last August for $1299 so that isn't new. $999 would grab lots of $$$ and attention, even if for a month to break the $1k barrier. And that is what I think Apple needs. To sell what users want, not what they want to sell us... which is what we have now.
Gregory (5 Macs 10 yrs)
If Apple has so much inventory... why are they sold out of macs at Microcenters and CompUSA's of the world??? I was going to get my fater an iBook for christmas and could find one anywhere....
You will be surprised at how many G4's are on a 1-2 weeks delivery schedule at Outpost. Not to mention the meager selection at CompUSA. Where is that backlog?
One thing people leave out of the equation is price of monitor. Apple keeps cutting CPU prices but doesn't touch monitors. Right now the thing that gives me the biggest pause is the $499 for a 17 inch monitor. That is too big a chunk. The lower CPU prices go, the more monitors stick out. For a while the older ones were going for $299 and that is where they should be at.
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40% versus 20%
The Macintosh user community is much more closely-knit than that of PC. In the PC world, products are introduced all year round, even though COMDEX Las Vegas gets much of the attention. In the Macintosh community, most users know (or communicate with someone who knows) that new products arrive at Mac Expo San Francisco, Tokyo, Boston (now NYC), Paris, and other cities around the world.
The G4 was just a few months old and just updated back in November of 1999, so buyer weren't holding their $$$. This time around, the G4 line up is just getting stale. Most savvy buyers know that rebates are a definite sign that new products are arriving and/or prices are dropping.
All factors combined created such short fall of sales. The inventory is a bit difficult to digest at this point, because year-end tax-related purchasers would have easily snapped up the existing units if they saw the January 1, 2001 prices. However, they have decided to let the rebate expire and wait for better performance and better prices. In this case, they may get both.