On Wednesday Apple announced that they were dropping the Macbook from their PC lineup and making the MacBook Air the new entry level Mac. To most this move made sense and personally I feel that now entry level Mac customers are getting a premium experience at an entry level price. I did however notice some in the analyst and media community who complained that the price was still too high and that Apple was pricing themselves out of the low end of the market.
This is a point that I just don’t understand. Apple has never tried to compete in the low end of the PC space so why would they start now? There is a market for the bottom end of the PC segment with products priced between $399 and $599 but Apple wants nothing to do with it and in my opinion they have no reason to.
Our research with consumers in the PC buying process indicate that a healthy percentage are looking for the value + quality segment and have a target price point of $799 to $999. These consumers are associating price with value and quality and the result is that they are willing to pay more. Although some specs of the MacBook Air go above $999 for the 11″ and 13″ consumer studies are continuing to show a high consideration for Macs. This is obviously why Apple continues to see Mac sales draw nearly half of purchasers being new to the Mac platform.
Apple is clearly in the value + quality segment of the market and they are perfectly happy there, as we see from their latest earnings. Those who claim Apple’s Mac products still need to get cheaper don’t realize that Apple doesn’t want to sell Corollas they have no intention to compete with those on the bottom of the market.
