For years now, conventional wisdom has held that Apple’s halo strategy — using iPod marketshare to pump up Mac shipments — will take off any day now, and the company will leap from 3 percent marketshare to much, much more.
A post at Apple 2.0 suggests that this expected growth has already arrived and might be reaching its limits. For the first half of the 2007 fiscal year, Berstein Research reports, Apple carries nearly 30 percent of the high-end laptop market — the 20 percent of laptop computers sold that fetched the highest prices. This is an increase from 7.8 percent only three years ago. The switch to Intel has obvious made the MacBook and MacBook Pro into runaway hits. When removing business sales from the equation, Apple has almost 50 percent of the high-end laptop market. Which is great, except that it means that Apple’s gotten its boost.
Where’s the new growth going to come from in the computer business?
Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete’s particular Apple avocations are both around design–interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!
