Apple – Is It an Experience Company???
by padapa on Mar.18, 2009, under Propeller Heads
I was discussing the whole OSX, EULA and Aplle products issue with a friend in Ithaca NY. He is a MacBook and iPhone user. As we discussed the concept of Apple as a hardware company, he blurted one “Apple’s not a hardware company, its an experience company”. He went on with his belief that Apple wants you to experience something different. That is why thy limit the hardware, control the software, DRM management and such.
When I asked him about what he thinks Apple will do with the OSX86 movement, he replied “ignore it, while making valed threats against it”. He thinks Apple will use it as a seeding grown for moer Mac sales … he maybe right. I asked about my model of a no support for non-Apple hardware version of OSX and he doesn’t think Apple will take the money and run. At $149 per copy and virtually no support costs, I think Apple is foolish to walk away from this nearly free revenue. With just a 100,000 unit sales, Apple would net about 15 million in revenue. If you hit a million users, Apple could be looking at $150 million in revenues, directly from Microsoft’s customer base. If you get a little silly and 10M users switched, you could get $1.5 Billion in sales. All of these sales don’t include the possibility of each user buying iWork , iLife and a further Apple hardware product. This is a large revenue opportunity!
If he is right and Apple is really an experince company, they’ll waste this opportunity too.
