MS claims 77% Mac Office use, blasts 'Apple tax'

View this article at: http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/01/07/ms.on.office.apple.tax/

Wednesday, Jan 07, 2009 1:20pm

MS claims 77% Mac Office use, blasts 'Apple tax'

Roughly 77 percent of American Mac users are running some form of Office for Mac on their computers, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit claims. The proportion is thought to be unusually high, particularly in light of Apple's first-party iWork suite, which offers functionality similar to Office and has been available for several years. Microsoft admits, though, that there is little to compare the 77 percent figure against, given that it has not conducted such studies in the past; similarly, there are no numbers available for countries outside the US.

The company meanwhile continues to criticize Apple for its alleged "Apple tax," a higher retail cost for computers which otherwise have the same specifications as a Windows system. In an e-mail sent to journalists this week, Microsoft argues that a low-end Mac mini is approximately 16 percent ($100) more costly than an equivalent PC, while a low-end iMac is 25 percent ($300) more expensive.

Microsoft further attacks Apple for offering only "modest" discounts on its computers at any given time, at best around 10 percent; the strategy is said to be particularly egregious in the context of a global recession. Premium branding in this context may in fact be harming the company, as the NPD Group observes that Mac sales fell 1 percent year-over-year in November, a dramatic change from the continuous growth of years past. Windows-based PC sales jumped 7 percent in November.